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WORKS.     Riverside  Edition.    9  vols. 
I,  II.  POEMS. 

III.  MARJORIE  DAW  AND  OTHER  STORIES. 

IV.  PRUDENCE   PALFREY,    AND   A  RIVERMOUTH    RO 

MANCE. 

V.  THE    QUEEN    OF   SHEBA,    AND   OTHER    STORIES. 
VI    THE   STILLWATER  TRAGEDY. 

VII.  THE    STORY   OF    A    BAD    BOY,    AND    THE    LITTLE 

VIOLINIST,   WITH    OTHER    SKETCHES. 

VIII.  FROM   PONKAPOG  TO  PESTH,  AND  AN  OLD  TOWN 

BY  THE  SEA. 

IX.  PONKAPOG    PAPERS,    A    SEA  TURN    AND   OTHER 

MATTERS. 
POEMS.     Riverside  Edition,    a  vols. 

THE   SAME.    Household  Edition.     Illustrated. 

THE   SAME.     Popular  Edition.     Illustrated. 
THE   SHADOWS  OF  THE   FLOWERS.     Illustrated. 
JUDITH   AND   HOLOFERNES.    A  Poem 
UNGUARDED   GATES   AND   OTHER    POEMS. 
WYNDHAM  TOWERS.    A  Poem. 
THE   SISTERS'   TRAGEDY,   ANO  OTHER   POEMS. 
MERCEDES.    A  Drama  in  Two  Acts. 
LATER   LYRICS. 

JUDITH   OF   BETHULIA.    A  Tragedy. 
A   SEA  TURN   AND   OTHER    MATTERS. 
MARJORIE   DAW.    Holiday  Edition. 

THE   SAME.     Cambridge  Classics. 
THE   STORY   OF  A    BAD    BOY.     Illustrated. 

THE   SAME.    Holiday  Edition     Illustrated  by  A.  B.  Frost 

THE   SAME.    Visitors' Edition.     Illustrated. 
TWO   BITES   AT  A   CHERRY   AND   OTHER   TALES. 
AN  OLD  TOWN    BY  THE    SEA. 
PRUDENCE    PALFREY.     With  frontispiece. 
THE   QUEEN    OF   SHEBA. 
THE    STILLWATER   TRAGEDY. 
PONKAPOG    PAPERS 
FROM   PONKAPOG  TO   PESTH. 
THE    STORY    OF    A    CAT.     Translated  from  the  French  of 

Emile  de  la  Be"dolliere.    Illustrated. 


HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 


TWO  BITES  AT  A  CHERRY 


WITH  OTHER   TALES 


BY 


THOMAS  BAILEY  ALDRICH 


BOSTON   AND   NEW   YORK 
HOUGHTON   MIFFLIN   COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,  1893,  BT  THOMAS  BAILEY  ALDRICH 
COPYRIGHT,  IQ2I,  BY  MARY  ELIZABETH  ALDRICH 

ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
PRINTED  IN  THE  U.S.A. 


CONTENTS 


MM 
v   TWO  BITES  AT  A  CHERRY         ....      1 

V  "FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD  OF  BATTLE  55 
v  THE  CHEVALIER  DE  RESSEGUIER  ...  94 
v  GOLIATH  ;..  .  .  .  .  .  .  .128 

MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL  .  .  .  .151 
v  A  CHRISTMAS  FANTASY,  WITH  A  MORAL  224 

HER  DYING  WORDS 243 


347705 


TWO  BITES  AT  A  CHERRY 


As  they  both  were  Americans,  and  typi 
cal  Americans,  it  ought  to  have  happened 
in  their  own  country.  But  destiny  has  no 
nationality,  and  consequently  no  patriotism  ; 
so  it  happened  in  Naples. 

When  Marcus  Whitelaw  strolled  out  of 
his  hotel  that  May  morning,  and  let  himself 
drift  with  the  crowd  along  the  Strada  del 
Duomo  until  he  reached  the  portals  of  the 
ancient  cathedral,  nothing  was  more  remote 
from  his  meditation  than  Mrs.  Rose  Ma 
son.  He  had  not  seen  her  for  fifteen  years, 
and  he  had  not  thought  of  her,  except  in 
an  intermittent  fashion,  for  seven  or  eight. 
There  had,  however,  been  a  period,  cov 
ering  possibly  four  years,  when  he  had 
thought  of  little  else.  During  that  heavy 


2  TWO  BITES  AT  A  CHERRY 

interim  lie  had  gone  about  with  a  pain  in 
his  bosom  —  a  pain  that  had  been  very 
keen  at  the  beginning,  and  then  had  grad 
ually  lost  its  edge.  Later  on,  that  invisi 
ble  hand  which  obliterates  even  the  deep- 
carved  grief  on  headstones  effectually 
smoothed  out  the  dent  in  Whitelaw's  heart. 
Rose  Jenness  at  nineteen  had  been  singu 
larly  adapted  to  making  dents  in  certain 
kinds  of  hearts.  Her  candor  and  unselfish 
ness,  her  disdain  of  insincerity  in  others, 
and  her  unconsciousness  of  the  spells  she 
cast  had  proved  more  fatal  to  Whitelaw 
than  the  most  studied  coquetry  would  have 
done.  In  the  deepest  stress  of  his  trouble 
he  was  denied  the  consolation  of  being  able 
to  reproach  her  with  duplicity.  He  had 
built  up  his  leaning  tower  of  hopes  with 
out  any  aid  from  her.  She  had  been  no 
thing  but  frank  and  unmisleading  from 
first  to  last.  Her  beauty  she  could  not 
help.  She  came  of  a  line  of  stately  men  and 
handsome  women.  Sir  Peter  Lely  painted 
them  in  Charles  the  Second's  time,  and 
Copley  found  them  ready  for  his  canvas  at 


TWO  BITES  AT  A  CHERRY  3 

the  close  of  the  colonial  period.  Through 
some  remote  cross  of  Saxon  and  Latin 
blood,  the  women  of  this  family  had  always 
been  fair  and  the  men  dark.  In  Rose 
Jenness  the  two  characteristics  flowered. 
When  New  England  produces  a  blonde 
with  the  eyes  of  a  brunette,  the  world  can 
not  easily  match  her,  especially  if  she  have 
that  rounded  slenderness  of  figure  which  is 
one  of  our  very  best  Americanisms. 

Without  this  blended  beauty,  which 
came  to  perfection  in  her  suddenly,  like 
the  blossoms  on  a  fruit-tree,  Whitelaw 
would  have  loved  Rose  all  the  same.  In 
deed,  her  physical  loveliness  had  counted 
for  little  in  his  passion,  though  the  love 
liness  had  afterwards  haunted  him  almost 
maliciously.  That  she  was  fair  of  person 
who  had  so  many  gracious  traits  of  mind 
and  disposition  was  a  matter  of  course. 
He  had  been  slower  than  others  in  detecting 
the  charm  that  wrapt  her  as  she  slipped 
into  womanhood.  They  had  grown  up  to 
gether  as  children,  and  had  known  no  sepa 
ration,  except  during  the  three  years  White' 


4  TWO  BITES  AT  A   CHERRY 

law  was  with  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  — 
an  absence  broken  by  several  returns  to 
the  North  on  recruiting  service,  and  one 
long  sojourn  after  a  dangerous  hurt  re 
ceived  at  Antietam.  He  never  knew  when 
he  began  to  love  Rose,  and  he  never  knew 
the  exact  moment  when  he  ceased  to  love 
her.  But  between  these  two  indefinable 
points  he  had  experienced  an  unhappiness 
that  was  anything  but  indefinite.  It  had 
been  something  tangible  and  measurable ; 
and  it  had  changed  the  course  of  his  career. 
Next  to  time,  there  is  no  surer  medicine 
than  hard  work  for  the  kind  of  disappoint 
ment  we  have  indicated.  Unfortunately 
for  Whitelaw,  he  was  moderately  rich  by 
inheritance,  and  when  he  discovered  that 
Rose's  candid  affection  was  not  love,  he 
could  afford  to  indulge  his  wretchedness. 
He  had  been  anxious  for  distinction,  for 
her  sake ;  but  now  his  ambition  was  gone. 
Of  what  value  to  him  were  worldly  prizes, 
if  she  refused  to  share  them?  He  pres 
ently  withdrew  from  the  legal  profession, 
in  which  he  had  given  promise  of  becom- 


TWO  BITES  AT  A  CHERRY  5 

ing  a  brilliant  pleader,  who  had  pleaded 
so  unsuccessfully  for  himself,  and  went 
abroad.  This  was  of  course  after  the  war. 

It  was  not  her  fault  that  all  communica 
tion  between  them  ceased  then  and  there. 
He  would  have  it  so.  The  affair  had  not 
been  without  its  bitterness  for  Rose.  White- 
law  was  linked  in  some  way  with  every 
agreeable  reminiscence  of  her  life;  she 
could  not  remember  the  time  when  she  was 
not  fond  of  him.  There  had  been  a  poig 
nancy  in  the  regret  with  which  she  had 
seen  the  friend  who  was  dear  to  her  trans 
forming  himself  into  a  lover  for  whom  she 
did  not  care  in  the  least.  It  had  pained 
her  to  give  him  pain,  and  she  had  done  it 
with  tears  in  her  eyes. 

Eighteen  months  later,  Rose  was  Mrs. 
Mason,  tears  and  all.  Richard  Mason  was 
a  Pacific  Railway  king  en  kerbe,  with  a 
palace  in  San  Francisco,  whither  he  im 
mediately  transported  his  bride.  The  news 
reached  Whitelaw  in  Seville,  and  gave  him 
a  twinge.  His  love,  according  to  his  own 
diagnosis,  was  already  dead;  it  was  pre- 


6  TWO  BITES  AT  A   CHERRY 

sumably,  then,  a  muscular  contraction  that 
caused  it  to  turn  a  little  in  its  coffin.  The 
following  year  some  question  of  investment 
brought  him  back  to  the  United  States, 
where  he  traveled  extensively,  carefully 
avoiding  California.  He  visited  Salt  Lake 
City,  however,  and  took  cynical  satisfaction 
in  observing  what  a  large  amount  of  con 
nubial  misery  there  was  to  the  square  foot. 
Yet  when  a  rumor  came  to  him,  some  tune 
subsequently,  that  Rose  herself  was  not 
very  happy  in  her  marriage,  he  had  the 
grace  to  be  sincerely  sorry. 

"  The  poor  transplanted  Rose  !  "  he  mur 
mured.  "  She  was  too  good  for  him ;  she 
was  too  good  for  anybody." 

This  was  four  years  after  she  had  refused 
to  be  his  wife;  time  had  brought  the  philo 
sophic  mind,  and  he  could  look  back  upon 
the  episode  with  tender  calmness,  and  the 
desire  to  do  justice  to  every  one.  Mean 
while  Rose  had  had  a  boy.  Whitelaw's 
feelings  in  respect  to  him  were  complicated. 

Seven  or  eight  years  went  by,  the  greater 
part  of  which  Whitelaw  passed  in  England. 


TWO  BITES  AT  A  CHERRY  1 

There  he  heard  nothing  of  Mrs.  Mason, 
and  when  in  America  he  heard  very  lit 
tle.  The  marriage  had  not  been  fortu 
nate,  the  Masons  were  enormously  wealthy, 
and  she  was  a  beauty  still.  The  Delaneys 
had  met  her,  one  winter,  at  Santa  Barbara. 
Her  letters  home  had  grown  more  and  more 
infrequent,  and  finally  ceased.  Her  father 
had  died,  and  the  family  was  broken  up 
and  scattered.  People  whom  nobody  knew 
occupied  the  old  mansion  on  the  slope  of 
Beacon  Hill.  One  of  the  last  spells  of  the 
past  was  lifted  for  Whitelaw  when  he  saw 
strange  faces  looking  out  of  those  sun- 
purpled  window-panes. 

If  Whitelaw  thought  of  Mrs.  Mason  at 
intervals,  it  was  with  less  distinctness  on 
each  occasion ;  the  old  love-passage,  when 
he  recalled  it  of  an  evening  over  his  cigar, 
or  in  the  course  of  some  solitary  walk,  had 
a  sort  of  phantasmal  quality  about  it.  The 
sharp  grief  that  was  to  have  lasted  forever 
had  resolved  itself  into  a  painless  memory. 
He  was  now  on  that  chilly  side  of  forty 
where  one  begins  to  take  ceremonious  leave 


8  TWO  SITUS  AT  A   CHERRY 

of  one's  illusions,  and  prefers  Burgundy  to 
champagne. 

When  the  announcement  of  Richard  Ma 
son's  death  was  telegraphed  East,  White- 
law  read  the  telegram  in  his  morning  paper 
with  scarcely  more  emotion  than  was  shown 
by  the  man  who  sat  opposite  him  reading 
the  particulars  of  the  last  homicide.  This 
was  in  a  carriage  on  the  Sixth  Avenue 
elevated  railway,  for  Whitelaw  chanced  to 
be  in  New  York  at  the  moment,  making 
preparations  for  an  extended  tour  in  Rus 
sia  and  its  dependencies.  The  Russian 
journey  proved  richer  in  novelty  than  he 
had  anticipated,  and  he  remained  nearly 
three  years  in  the  land  of  the  Tsars.  On 
returning  to  Western  Europe  he  was  seized 
with  the  humor  to  revisit  certain  of  the 
Italian  cities, — Ravenna,  Rome,  Venice,  and 
Naples.  It  was  in  Naples  that  he  found 
himself  on  that  particular  May  morning  to 
which  reference  has  been  made. 

Whitelaw  had  never  before  happened  to 
be  in  the  city  during  thefesta  of  San  Gen- 
naro.  There  are  three  of  these  festivals 


TWO  BITES  AT  A   CHERRY  9 

annually  —  in  May,  September,  and  De 
cember.  He  had  fallen  upon  the  most  pic 
turesque  of  the  series.  The  miracle  of  the 
Liquefaction  of  the  Blood  of  St.  Januarius 
was  to  take  place  at  nine  o'clock  that  fore 
noon  in  the  cathedral,  and  it  was  a  specta 
cle  which  Whitelaw  had  often  desired  to 
witness. 

So  it  was  that  he  followed  the  crowd 
along  the  sunny  strada,  and  shouldered  his 
way  into  the  church,  where  the  great  can 
dles  were  already  lighted.  The  cool  atmos 
phere  of  the  interior,  pleasantly  touched 
with  that  snuffy,  musky  odor  which  haunts 
Italian  churches,  was  refreshing  after  the 
incandescent  heat  outside.  He  did  not 
mind  being  ten  or  twelve  minutes  too  early. 

Whitelaw  had  managed  to  secure  a  po 
sition  not  far  from  the  altar-rail,  and  was 
settling  himself  comfortably  to  enjoy  the 
ceremony,  with  his  back  braced  against  a 
marble  column,  when  his  eyes  fell  upon  the 
profile  of  a  lady  who  was  standing  about 
five  yards  in  advance  of  him  in  an  oblique 
line. 


n 

FOB  an  instant  that  face  seemed  to 
Whitelaw  a  part  of  the  theatric  unreality 
which  always  impresses  one  in  Roman 
Catholic  churches  abroad.  The  sudden 
transition  from  the  white  glare  of  the  street 
into  the  semi-twilight  of  the  spacious  nave ; 
the  soft  bloom  of  the  stained  windows ;  the 
carving  and  gilding  of  choir  and  reredos; 
the  draperies  and  frescoes,  and  the  ghostly 
forms  of  incense  slowly  stretching  upward, 
like  some  of  Blake's  weird  shapes,  to  blend 
themselves  with  the  shadows  among  the 
Gothic  arches  —  all  these  instantly  conspire 
to  lift  one  from  the  commonplace  level  of 
life.  With  such  accessories,  and  in  certain 
moods,  the  mind  pliantly  surrenders  itself 
to  the  incredible. 

During  possibly  thirty  seconds,  Whitelaw 
might  have  been  mistaken  for  the  mate 
of  one  of  those  half-length  figures  in  alto- 


TWO  BITES  AT  A    CHERRY  11 

relievo  set  against  the  neighboring  pilasters, 
so  grotesque  and  wooden  was  his  expression. 
Then  he  gave  a  perceptible  start.  That 
gold  hair,  in  waves  of  its  own  on  the  low 
brows,  the  sombre  eyelashes  —  he  could  not 
see  her  eyes  from  where  he  stood  —  the 
poise  of  the  head,  the  modeling  of  the  throat 
—  who  could  that  be  but  Rose  Jenness? 
He  had  involuntarily  eliminated  the  Mason 
element,  for  the  sight  of  her  had  taken  him 
straight  back  to  the  days  when  there  were 
no  Pacific  Railway  despots. 

Fifteen  years  (good  heavens !  was  it  fif 
teen  years  ?)  had  not  touched  a  curve  of  the 
tall,  slight  figure.  He  was  struck  by  that, 
as  she  stood  there  with  her  satin  basque 
buttoned  up  to  the  thread-lace  neckerchief 
knotted  under  her  chin,  for  an  insidious 
chill  lurked  in  the  air.  The  garment  fitted 
closely,  accentuating  every  line  of  the  slen 
der  waist  and  flower-like  full  bust.  At  the 
left  of  the  corsage  was  a  bunch  of  violets 
held  by  a  small  silver  clasp  —  the  selfsame 
violets,  he  was  tempted  to  believe,  that  she 
had  worn  the  evening  he  parted  with  her 


12  TWO  BITES  AT  A   CHERRY 

tragically  in  the  back  drawing-room  of  the 
house  on  Beacon  Hill.  Neither  she  nor 
they  had  faded.  All  the  details  of  that 
parting  flashed  upon  him  with  strange 
vividness :  the  figure-piece  by  Hunt  above 
the  funereal  fireplace;  the  crimson  India 
shawl  hurriedly  thrown  over  the  back  of  a 
chair  and  trailing  on  the  floor ;  Rose  stand 
ing  in  the  middle  of  the  dimly-lighted  room 
and  holding  out  to  him  an  appealing  hand, 
which  he  refused  to  take.  He  remembered 
noticing,  as  he  went  home  dazed  through 
the  moonlight,  that  the  crisp  crocuses  were 
in  bloom  in  the  little  front  yards  of  the 
houses  on  Mount  Vernon  Street.  It  was 
May  then,  and  it  was  May  now,  and  there 
stood  Rose.  As  he  gazed  at  her,  a  queer 
sense  of  old  comradeship  —  the  old  friend 
ship  that  had  gone  to  sleep  when  love  awak 
ened  —  began  softly  to  stir  in  his  bosom. 

Rose  in  Italy !  Then  he  recollected  one 
of  the  past  rumors  that  had  floated  to  him 
touching  her  desire  for  foreign  travel,  and 
Mason's  sordid  absorption  in  his  railway 
schemes.  Now  that  she  was  untrammeled, 


TWO  BITES  AT  A  CHERRY  13 

she  had  come  abroad.  She  had  probably 
left  home  with  her  son  soon  after  Mason's 
death,  and  had  been  flitting  from  one  con 
tinental  city  to  another  ever  since,  in  the 
tiresome  American  fashion.  That  might 
well  have  befallen  without  Whitelaw  hear 
ing  of  it  in  Russia.  The  lists  of  new  arriv 
als  were  the  things  he  avoided  in  reading 
Galignani,  just  as  he  habitually  avoided  the 
newly-arrived  themselves. 

There  was  no  hesitation  in  his  mind  as  to 
the  course  he  should  pursue.  The  moment 
he  could  move  he  would  go  to  Rose,  and 
greet  her  without  embarrassment  or  any 
arriere  pensee.  It  was  impracticable  to 
move  at  present,  for  the  people  were  packed 
about  him  as  solidly  as  dates  in  a  crate. 
Meanwhile  he  had  the  freedom  of  his  eyes. 
He  amused  himself  with  recognizing  and 
classifying  one  by  one  certain  evidences  of 
individuality  in  Rose's  taste  in  the  matter 
of  dress.  The  hat,  so  subdued  in  color  and 
sparing  of  ornament  as  to  make  it  a  mystery 
where  the  rich  effect  came  from  —  there  was 
a  great  deal  of  her  in  that.  He  would  have 


14  TWO  BITES  AT  A   CHERRY 

identified  it  at  once  as  Rose's  hat  if  he  had 
picked  it  up  in  the  Desert  of  Sahara.  Not 
ing  this,  and  the  long  tan-colored  gloves 
which  reached  in  wrinkles  to  the  elbow,  and 
would  have  reached  to  the  shoulder  if  they 
had  been  drawn  out  smooth,  Whitelaw  mur 
mured  to  himself,  "  Rue  de  la  Paix !  "  He 
had  a  sensation  of  contiguity  to  a  pair  of 
high-heeled  kid  boots  with  rosettes  at  the 
instep,  such  as  are  worn  in  all  weathers  by 
aristocratic  shepherdesses  in  Watteau's  pink 
landscapes.  That,  however,  was  an  unpro 
voked  incursion  into  the  territory  of  con 
jecture,  for  Whitelaw  could  see  only  the 
upper  portion  of  Rose. 

He  was  glad,  since  accident  had  thrown 
them  together,  that  accident  had  not  done 
it  in  the  first  twelvemonth  of  Rose's  widow 
hood.  Any  mortuary  display  on  her  part 
would,  he  felt,  have  jarred  the  wrong  note 
in  him,  and  spoiled  the  pleasure  of  meeting 
her.  But  she  was  out  of  mourning  now; 
the  man  was  dead,  had  been  dead  three 
years,  and  ought  to  have  lived  and  died  in 
the  pterodactyl  period,  to  which  he  properly 


TWO  BITES  AT  A   CHERRY  15 

belonged.  Here  Whitelaw  paused  in  his 
musing,  and  smiled  at  his  own  heat,  with  a 
transient  humorous  perception  of  it.  Let 
the  man  go ;  what  was  the  use  of  thinking 
about  him  ? 

Dismissing  the  late  Richard  Mason,  who 
really  had  not  been  a  prehistoric  monster, 
and  had  left  Mrs.  Mason  a  large  fortune  to 
do  what  she  liked  with,  Whitelaw  fell  to 
thinking  about  Rose's  son.  He  must  be 
quite  thirteen  years  old,  our  friend  reflected. 
What  an  absurdly  young-looking  woman 
Rose  was  to  be  the  mother  of  a  thirteen- 
year-old  boy !  —  doubtless  a  sad  scapegrace, 
answering  to  the  definition  which  Whitelaw 
remembered  that  one  of  his  strong-minded 
country-women  had  given  of  the  typical  bad 
boy  —  a  boy  who  looks  like  his  mother  and 
behaves  like  his  father.  Did  Rose's  son 
look  like  his  mother  ? 

Just  then  Rose  slightly  turned  her  head, 
and  Whitelaw  fancied  that  he  detected  an 
inquiring,  vaguely  anxious  expression  in  her 
features,  as  if  she  were  searching  for  some 
one  in  the  assemblage.  "  She  is  looking  for 


16  TWO  BITES  AT  A  CHERRY 

young  Mason,"  he  soliloquized ;  which  was 
precisely  the  fact.  She  glanced  over  the 
church,  stared  for  an  instant  straight  past 
Whitelaw,  and  then  resumed  her  former 
position.  He  had  prepared  himself  to  meet 
her  gaze ;  but  she  had  not  seen  him.  And 
now  a  tall  Englishman,  with  a  single  eye 
glass  that  gleamed  like  a  headlight,  came 
and  planted  himself,  as  if  with  malice  pre 
pense,  between  the  two  Americans. 

"The  idiot!"  muttered  Whitelaw,  be 
tween  his  teeth. 

Up  to  the  present  point  he  had  paid  no 
attention  whatever  to  St.  Januarius.  The 
apparition  of  his  early  love,  in  what  might 
be  called  the  bloom  of  youth,  was  as  much 
miracle  as  he  could  take  in  at  once.  More 
over,  the  whole  of  her  was  here,  and  only  a 
fragment  of  the  saint.  Whitelaw  was  now 
made  aware,  by  an  expectant  surging  of  the 
crowd  in  front  and  the  craning  of  innumer 
able  necks  behind  him,  that  something  im 
portant  was  on  the  tapis. 

A  priest,  in  ordinary  non-sacramental 
costume,  had  placed  on  the  altar,  from 


TWO  B1TEB  AT  A  CHERRY  17 

which  all  but  the  permanent  decorations 
had  been  removed,  a  life-size  bust  of  St. 
Januarius  in  gold  and  silver,  inclosing  the 
remains  of  the  martyr's  skull.  Having  per 
formed  this  act,  the  priest,  who  for  the  oc 
casion  represented  the  archbishop,  took  his 
stand  at  the  left  of  the  dais.  Immediately 
afterwards  a  procession  of  holy  fathers, 
headed  by  acolytes  bearing  lighted  candela 
bra,  issued  from  behind  the  high  altar, 
where  the  saint's  relics  are  kept  in  a  taber 
nacle  on  off  days  and  nights.  An  imposing 
personage  half-way  down  the  file  carried  a 
tall  brass  monstrance,  in  which  was  sus 
pended  by  a  ring  an  oblong  flat  crystal 
flask,  or  case,  set  in  an  antique  reliquary  of 
silver,  with  handles  at  each  end.  This  con 
tained  the  phenomenal  blood. 

Having  deposited  the  monstrance  on  the 
altar,  the  custodian  reverently  detached 
the  relic,  and  faced  the  audience.  As  he 
held  up  the  flask  by  the  handles  and  slowly 
turned  it  round,  those  nearest  could  distin 
guish  through  the  blurred  surface  a  dark 
yellowish  opaque  substance,  occupying  about 


18  TWO  BITES  AT  A   CHERRY 

two  thirds  of  the  vessel.  It  was  apparently 
a  solid  mass,  which  in  a  liquid  form  might 
have  filled  a  couple  of  sherry  glasses.  The 
legend  runs  that  the  thoughtful  Koman 
lady  who  gathered  the  blood  from  the 
ground  with  a  sponge  inadvertently  let 
drop  a  bit  of  straw  into  the  original  phial. 
This  identical  straw,  which  appears  when 
the  lump  is  in  a  state  of  solution,  is  con 
sidered  a  strong  piece  of  circumstantial 
evidence.  It  is  a  remarkable  fact,  and  one 
that  by  itself  establishes  the  authenticity 
of  San  Gennaro,  that  several  of  his  female 
descendants  always  assist  at  the  liquefaction 
—  a  row  of  very  aged  and  very  untidy  Nea 
politan  ladies,  to  whom  places  of  honor  are 
given  on  these  occasions. 

Shut  out  from  Rose,  for  the  obnoxious 
Englishman  completely  blockaded  her, 
Whitelaw  lent  himself  with  faintly  stimu 
lated  interest  to  the  ceremony,  which  was 
now  well  under  way.  He  was  doubtful  of 
many  things,  and  especially  skeptical  as  to 
matters  supernatural.  Accepting  the  mira 
cle  at  its  own  valuation  —  at  par  value,  as 


TWO  BITES  AT  A   CHERRY  19 

he  stated  it  —  what  conceivable  profit  could 
accrue  to  mankind  from  the  smelting  of 
that  poor  old  gentleman's  coagulated  blood  ? 
How  had  all  this  mediaeval  mummery  siu\ 
vived  the  darkness  in  which  it  was  born  ! 

With  half  listless  eye  Whitelaw  watched 
the  priest  as  he  stood  at  the  rail,  facing  the 
spectators  and  solemnly  reversing  the  reli 
quary.  From  time  to  time  he  paused,  and 
held  a  lighted  candle  behind  the  flask  in 
order  to  ascertain  if  any  change  had  taken 
place,  and  then  resumed  operations  amid 
the  breathless  silence.  An  atmosphere 
charged  with  suspense  seemed  to  have  set 
tled  upon  the  vast  throng. 

Six  —  eight  —  ten  minutes  passed.  The 
priest  had  several  times  repeated  his  inves 
tigation  ;  but  the  burnt-sienna-like  mass 
held  to  its  consistency.  In  life  St.  Janu- 
arius  must  have  been  a  person  of  consid 
erable  firmness,  a  quality  which  his  blood 
appeared  still  to  retain  even  after  the  lapse 
of  more  than  fourteen  centuries. 

A  thrill  of  disappointment  and  dismay 
ran  through  the  multitude.  The  miracle 


20  TWO  SITES  AT  A   CHERRY 

was  not  working,  in  fact  had  refused  to 
work !  The  attendants  behind  the  chancel 
rail  wore  perturbed  faces.  Two  of  the 
brothers  turned  to  the  altar  and  began  say- 
iiig  the  Athanasian  Creed,  while  here  and 
there  a  half  breathed  prayer  or  a  deep  mut 
tering  of  protest  took  flight  from  the  con 
gregation  ;  for  the  Neapolitans  insist  on  a 
certain  degree  of  punctuality  in  St.  Janu- 
arius.  Any  unreasonable  delay  on  his  part 
is  portentous  of  dire  calamity  to  the  city 
—  earthquake  or  pestilence.  The  least 
that  can  be  predicted  is  an  eruption  of 
Mount  Vesuvius.  Even  so  late  as  the  end 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  a  failure  of  the 
miracle  usually  led  to  panic  and  violence. 
To-day  such  a  result  is  hardly  possible, 
though  in  the  rare  instances  when  the  mar 
tyr  procrastinates  a  little,  the  populace  fall 
to  upbraiding  their  patron  saint  with  a 
vehemence  that  is  quite  as  illogical  in  its 
way. 

Whitelaw  himself  was  nearly  ripe  to 
join  in  some  such  demonstration.  Trans 
fixed  to  the  marble  column  —  like  a  second 


TWO  BITES  AT  A  CHERRY  21 

St.  Sebastian  —  and  pierced  with  innumera 
ble  elbows,  he  had  grown  very  impatient  of 
the  whole  business.  There  was  Rose  within 
twenty  feet  of  him,  and  he  could  neither 
approach  her  nor  see  her !  He  heartily 
wished  that  when  Proconsul  Dracontius 
threw  St.  Januarius  to  the  lions  in  the  am 
phitheatre  of  Pozzuoli,  the  lions  had  not  left 
a  shred  of  him,  instead  of  tamely  lapping 
his  hand.  Then  Dracontius  would  not  have 
been  obliged  to  behead  the  man  ;  then  that 
Roman  lady  would  not  have  come  along 
with  her  sponge ;  then  he,  Marcus  White- 
law,  a  free-born  American  citizen,  would 
not  have  been  kept  standing  there  a  life 
time  waiting  for  an  opportunity  to  say  a 
word  to  his  old  love ! 

He  felt  that  he  had  much  to  say  to  Rose. 
The  barrier  which  had  separated  him  from 
her  all  these  years  had  been  swept  away. 
The  whole  situation  was  essentially  changed. 
If  she  were  willing  to  accept  the  friendship 
which  she  once  stipulated  as  the  only  tie 
possible  between  them,  he  was  ready  to 
offer  it  to  her  now.  If  she  had  not  altered, 


22  TWO  BITES  AT  A  CHERRY 

if  she  remained  her  old  candid  cordial  self, 
what  a  treat  it  would  be  to  him  to  act  as 
her  cicerone  in  Naples  —  for  Naples  was 
probably  terra  incognita  to  Rose.  There 
were  delightful  drives  along  the  Riviere  di 
Chiaia;  excursions  to  Pompeii,  Baiae,  and 
Solfatara ;  trips  by  steamer  to  Capri,  Sor 
rento,  and  Amalfi.  He  pictured  the  two  of 
of  them  drifting  in  a  boat  into  the  sappha- 
rine  enchantment  of  the  Blue  Grotto  at 
Capri  —  the  three  of  them,  rather ;  for 
"  By  Jove  !  "  he  reflected,  "  we  should  have 
to  take  the  boy  with  us."  This  reflection 
somewhat  dashed  his  spirits.  The  juvenile 
Mason  would  be  a  little  bore ;  and  if  he 
did  n't  look  like  his  mother,  and  did  look 
like  his  father,  the  youth  would  be  a  great 
bore. 

Now  as  Whitelaw  had  never  seen  the 
late  Mr.  Mason,  or  even  a  counterfeit  pre 
sentment  of  him,  any  resemblance  that 
might  chance  to  exist  between  the  father 
and  the  son  was  not  likely  to  prove  aggres 
sive.  This  reflection  also  occurred  to 
Whitelaw,  and  caused  him  to  smile.  He 


TWO  BITES  AT  A  CHERRY  23 

had  a  touch  of  that  national  gift  of  humor 
ous  self-introspection  which  enables  Ameri 
cans,  almost  alone  among  human  bipeds,  to 
smile  at  their  own  expense. 

While  these  matters  were  passing  through 
his  mind,  and  he  had  given  up  all  hope  of 
extricating  himself  from  his  predicament 
until  the  end  of  the  ceremony,  a  sudden 
eddy  swirled  round  the  column,  the  crowd 
wavered  and  broke,  and  Whitelaw  was  free. 
The  disintegration  of  the  living  mass  was 
only  momentary,  but  before  it  could  close 
together  again  he  had  contrived  to  get  three 
yards  away  from  the  site  of  his  martyr 
dom.  Further  advance  then  became  diffi 
cult.  By  dint  of  pushing  and  diplomatic 
elbowing  he  presently  gained  another  yard. 
The  goal  was  almost  won. 

A  moment  later  he  stood  at  Rose's  side. 


m 

ROSE  had  her  head  turned  three  quarters 
to  the  right,  and  was  unaware  that  any  one 
had  supplanted  the  tall  English  gentleman 
recently  looming  on  her  left.  Whitelaw 
drew  a  long  breath,  and  did  not  speak  at 
once,  but  stood  biting  his  under  lip  with  an 
air  of  comic  irresolution.  He  was  painfully 
conscious  that  it  was  comic.  He  had,  in 
fact,  fallen  into  an  absurd  perplexity.  How 
should  he  address  her  ?  He  did  not  quite 
dare  to  call  her  "  Rose,"  and  every  fibre  of 
his  being  revolted  against  calling  her  "  Mrs. 
Mason."  Yet  he  must  address  her  in  some 
fashion,  and  instantly.  There  was  one 
alternative  —  not  to  address  her.  He  bent 
down  a  little,  and  touched  her  lightly  on 
the  shoulder. 

The  lady  wheeled  sharply,  with  a  move 
ment  that  must  have  been  characteristic  of 
her,  and  faced  him.  There  was  no  faltering 


TWO  BITE 8  AT  A  CHERRY  25 

or  reservation  in  voice  or  manner  as  she  ex 
claimed  "  Marc !  "  and  gave  one  of  the  tan- 
colored  gloves  into  his  keeping  for  twenty 
seconds  or  so.  She  had  spoken  rather  loud, 
forgetting  circumstance  and  place  in  her 
surprise,  and  several  of  the  masculine  by 
standers  smiled  sympathetically  on  la  bella 
Americana.  There  was  the  old  ring  to  her 
voice,  and  it  vibrated  musically  on  White- 
law's  ear. 

"Rose,"  he  said,  in  an  undertone,  "I 
cannot  tell  you  how  glad  I  am  of  this.  I 
begin  to  believe  that  things  are  planned  for 
me  better  than  I  can  plan  them." 

"  This  was  planned  charmingly  —  but  it 
was  odd  to  make  us  meet  in  Naples,  when 
we  have  so  much  room  at  home  to  meet  in." 

"  The  odd  feature  of  it  to  me  is  that  it 
does  n't  appear  odd.  I  don't  see  how  any 
thing  else  could  have  happened  without 
breaking  all  the  laws  of  probability." 

"  It  seems  much  too  good  to  be  true," 
said  Rose  gayly. 

She  was  unaffectedly  happy  over  the  en 
counter,  and  the  manner  of  it.  She  had 


26  TWO  BITES  AT  A  CHERRY 

caused  Whitelaw  a  deep  mortification  in 
days  past,  and  though  it  had  been  the 
consequence  of  no  fault  of  her  own,  had 
indeed  been  entirely  Whitelaw's,  she  had 
always  wanted  the  assurance  of  his  forgive 
ness.  That  he  had  withheld  through  long 
years,  and  now  he  forgave  her.  She  read 
the  pardon  in  his  voice  and  eyes.  Rose 
scanned  him  a  little  curiously,  though  with 
no  overt  act  of  curiosity.  He  had  grown 
stouter,  but  the  added  fullness  was  not  un 
becoming  :  he  used  to  be  too  spare  for  his 
stature.  His  sharp  New  England  face  be 
longed  to  a  type  that  seldom  loses  its  angles. 
The  scar  in  the  shape  of  a  cross  on  his  left 
cheek  was  decorative.  The  handsomely 
moulded  upper  lip  was  better  without  the 
mustache.  There  were  silvery  glints  here 
and  there  where  the  chestnut  hair  was 
brushed  back  from  the  temples.  These  first 
few  scattering  snowflakes  of  time  went  well 
with  his  bronzed  complexion ;  for  he  was  as 
brown  as  an  Indian,  from  travel.  On  the 
whole,  fifteen  years  had  decidedly  adorned 
him. 


TWO   BITES  AT  A   CHERRY  27 

44  How  long  have  you  been  here  —  in 
Naples,  I  mean?"  questioned  Whitelaw, 
again  under  his  breath. 

"  A  week ;  and  you  ?  " 

"Since  yesterday.  I  came  chiefly  for 
this  festa." 

"  I  did  n't  dream  you  were  so  devout." 

"The  conversion  is  recent;  but  hence 
forth  I  swear  by  St.  Januarius  through 
thick  and  thin,  though  as  a  general  thing 
I  prefer  him  thin  —  when  it  doesn't  take 
too  long." 

"  If  any  one  should  hear  you !  "  whispered 
Rose,  glancing  round  furtively. 

"  Why,  the  church  itself  does  n't  cling 
very  strongly  to  the  miracle  nowadays,  and 
would  gladly  be  rid  of  it ;  but  the  simple 
folk  of  the  Santa  Lucia  quarter  and  the 
outlying  volcanoes  insist  on  having  their 
St.  Januarius.  I  imagine  it  would  cost  a 
revolution  to  banish  him.  Rose,  when  did 
you  leave  home  ?  " 

"  Last  March.  Hush !  "  she  added,  lay 
ing  a  finger  to  her  lip.  "Something  is 
happening  in  the  chanceL" 


28  TWO  BITES  AT  A  CHERRY 

The  martyr's  blood  had  finally  given 
signs  of  taking  the  proper  sanguine  hue, 
to  the  intense  relief  of  the  populace,  from 
which  arose  a  dull  multitudinous  murmur, 
like  that  of  a  distant  swarm  of  bees.  The 
priest,  with  a  gleam  of  beatific  triumph  in 
his  cavernous  eyes,  was  holding  the  reliquary 
high  aloft.  The  vast  congregation  swayed 
to  and  fro,  and  some  tumult  was  created 
by  devotees  in  the  background  endeavor 
ing  to  obtain  coignes  of  vantage  nearer  the 
altar. 

"Surely,  you  have  not  trusted  yourself 
alone  in  this  place  ?  "  said  Whitelaw. 

"  No,  I  'm  with  you,"  Rose  answered 
smiling. 

"  But  you  did  not  come  unattended  ?  " 

"Richard  came  with  me;  we  got  sepa 
rated  immediately  on  entering  the  cathedral, 
and  lost  each  other." 

"Richard  —  that  is  the  name  of  your 
son,"  remarked  Whitelaw,  after  a  pause. 
The  father's  name ! 

"  Yes,  and  I  want  you  to  see  him.  He  'a 
a  fine  fellow." 


TWO  BITES  AT  A  CHERRY  29 

"  I  should  like  to  see  him,"  said  White- 
law  perfunctorily. 

"  He  is  very  clever,  not  like  me." 

"  I  hope  he  's  as  unaware  of  his  clever 
ness  as  you  are  of  yours,  Rose." 

"  I  am  quite  aware  of  mine.  I  only  said 
that  his  was  different.  That  spoils  your 
compliment.  He  's  to  remain  over  here  at 
school  —  in  Germany  —  if  I  can  make  up 
my  mind  in  the  autumn  to  leave  him.  When 
do  you  return  to  America  ?  " 

"  In  the  autumn,"  said  Whitelaw, 
promptly,  a  little  to  his  own  surprise,  for 
until  then  he  really  had  had  no  plan. 

"  Perhaps  we  can  arrange  to  go  back  on 
the  same  steamer,"  suggested  Rose.  "  We 
crossed  in  the  Cuba,  and  liked  her.  She  's 
advertised  to  sail  on  the  17th  of  September; 
how  would  that  suit  you,  for  example  ?  " 

The  suggestion  smiled  upon  Whitelaw, 
and  he  was  about  to  reply,  when  a  peal  from 
the  great  organ,  announcing  the  consumma 
tion  of  the  miracle,  reverberated  through 
the  church  and  cut  him  short.  As  the 
thunders  died  away,  the  voices  of  chanting 


30  TWO  BITES  AT  A   CHERRY 

priests  ascended  from  the  chancel,  where 
some  choir-boys  were  strewing  rose-leaves 
over  the  marble  steps  leading  to  the  altar. 
At  the  same  moment  the  boom  of  a  heavy 
gun,  fired  from  the  ramparts  of  the  Castel 
dell'  Ovo,  shook  the  windows.  The  city 
ordnance  was  saluting  St.  Januarius  —  a 
custom  that  has  since  fallen  into  desuetude. 

"  Look  !  "  exclaimed  Rose,  laying  her 
hand  impulsively  on  Whitelaw's  arm,  "  see 
the  birds  !  That 's  an  exquisite  fancy  !  " 

A  flock  of  sparrows  had  been  let  loose, 
and  were  beating  the  misty  air  with  un 
certain  wings,  darting  hither  and  thither 
through  the  nave  and  under  the  arches,  in 
search  of  resting-places  on  frieze  and  cor 
nice  and  jutting  stonework.  Meanwhile  the 
priest  had  stepped  down  from  the  dais  and 
was  passing  among  the  people,  who  crowded 
round  him  to  press  their  lips  and  foreheads 
to  the  flask  inclosed  in  the  reliquary.  The 
less  devotional,  and  those  who  had  already 
performed  the  rite,  were  slowly  wending 
their  way  to  the  various  outlets  on  the 
strada. 


TWO  SITES  AT  A   CHERRY  31 

"  I  am  glad  it 's  over,"  declared  White- 
law. 

"  To  think,"  observed  Rose  reflectively, 
"  that  he  has  got  to  go  all  through  it  again 
to-morrow !  " 

"  Who  ?  " 

"  That  poor  dear  saint." 

"Oh,"  laughed  Whitelaw,  "I  thought 
you  meant  me.  He,  does  n't  mind  it ;  it 's 
his  profession.  There  are  objects  more  de 
serving  of  your  pity.  I,  for  instance,  who 
have  no  sort  of  talent  for  martyrdom.  You 
should  have  seen  me  —  pinned  to  that  col 
umn,  like  an  entomological  specimen,  for 
forty  mortal  minutes !  I  would  n't  go 
through  it  again  for  a  great  deal." 

"Not  for  the  sake  of  meeting  an  old 
friend?" 

"  It  was  the  old  friend  that  made  it  par 
ticularly  hard.  To  be  so  near  her,  and  not 
able  to  speak  to  her !  And  part  of  the 
time  not  to  have  even  the  consolation  of 
seeing  the  sweep  of  the  ring-dove's  wing  on 
the  left  side  of  her  new  Paris  hat." 

Rose  looked  up  into  his  face,  and  smiled 


32  TWO  SITES  AT  A   CHERRY 

in  a  half  absent  way.  She  was  far  from 
averse  to  having  a  detail  of  her  toilet  no 
ticed  by  those  she  liked.  In  former  days 
Whitelaw  had  had  a  quick  eye  in  such  tri 
fles,  and  his  remark  seemed  to  her  a  verita 
ble  little  piece  of  the  pleasant  past,  with  an 
odd,  suggestive  flavor  about  it. 

She  had  slipped  her  hand  through  his 
arm,  and  the  pair  were  moving  leisurely 
with  the  stream  towards  one  of  the  leather- 
screened  doors  opening  upon  the  vestibule. 
The  manner  in  which  Kose  fell  in  with 
his  step,  and  a  certain  subtile  something 
he  recognized  in  the  light  pressure  of  her 
weight,  carried  him,  in  his  turn,  very  far 
back  into  the  olden  time.  The  fifteen  years, 
like  the  two  and  thirty  years  in  Tennyson's 
lyric,  were  as  a  mist  that  rolls  away.  It 
appeared  to  Whitelaw  as  if  they  had  never 
been  separated,  or  had  parted  only  yester 
day.  How  naturally  and  sweetly  she  had 
picked  up  the  dropped  thread  of  the  old 
friendship !  The  novelty  of  her  presence 
had  evaporated  at  the  first  words  she  had 
spoken ;  only  the  pleasure  of  it  remained. 


TWO  BITES  AT  A   CHERRY  33 

To  him  there  was  nothing  strange  or  un 
expected  in  their  wholly  unexpected  and 
entirely  strange  meeting.  As  he  had  told 
her,  he  did  not  see  how  anything  else  could 
have  happened.  Already  he  had  acquired 
the  habit  of  being  with  her ! 

"  Good  heavens ! "  he  said  to  himself, "  it 
can't  be  that  I  am  falling  in  love  with  Hose 
over  again !  " 

The  idea  brought  a  flickering  smile  to 
Whitelaw's  lips,  the  idea  of  falling  in  love 
at  first  sight  —  after  a  decennium  and  a 
half! 

"What  are  you  smiling  at?"  she  de 
manded,  looking  up  alertly. 

"  I  did  n't  know  I  was  smiling." 

"But  you  were;  and  an  unexplained 
smile  when  two  persons  are  alone  together, 
with  two  thousand  others,  is  as  inadmissible 
as  whispering  in  company." 

Whitelaw  glanced  at  her  with  an  amused, 
partly  embarrassed  expression,  and  made 
no  response.  They  were  passing  at  the  in 
stant  through  a  narrow  strip  of  daylight 
slanted  from  one  of  the  great  blazoned 


34  TWO  BITES  AT  A  CHERRY 

windows,  and  he  was  enabled  to  see  Rose's 
face  with  more  distinctness  than  he  hitherto 
had  done.  If  it  had  lost  something  of  its 
springtide  bloom  and  outline  —  and  he  saw 
that  that  was  so — it  had  gained  a  beauty 
of  a  rarer  and  richer  sort.  There  was  a 
deeper  lustre  to  the  dark-fringed  eyes,  as  if 
they  had  learned  to  think,  and  a  greater 
tenderness  in  the  curves  of  the  mouth,  as 
if  it  had  learned  to  be  less  imperious.  How 
handsome  she  was  —  handsomer  than  she 
had  been  at  nineteen  ! 

In  his  rapid  survey,  Whitelaw's  eye  had 
lighted  on  the  small  clasp  holding  the  vio 
lets  to  her  corsage  —  and  rested  there. 
The  faint  flush  that  came  to  his  cheek  grad 
ually  deepened. 

"  Is  that  the  clasp  I  gave  you  when  you 
were  a  girl?  "  he  finally  asked. 

"  You  recognize  it  ?  —  yes." 

"  And  you  've  kept  the  trifle  all  these 
centuries ! " 

"  That 's  not  polite  —  when  I  was  a  girl, 
several  hundred  years  ago !  I  kept  it  be 
cause  it  was  a  birthday  gift;  because  it 


TWO  SITES  AT  A   CHERRY  35 

was  a  trifle  ;  then  from  habit,  and  now  the 
centuries  have  turned  it  into  a  bit  of  price 
less  bric-a-brac." 

Somehow  Rose's  explanation  did  not 
seem  to  him  quite  so  exquisite  as  the  bare 
fact  itself. 

Whitelaw  was  now  conscious  of  a  very 
perceptible  acceleration  in  the  flow  of  the 
current  that  was  bearing  them  towards  the 
cathedral  entrance.  It  was  not  his  purpose 
that  they  should  reach  it  just  yet.  Their 
brief  dialogue,  carried  on  in  undertone,  and 
the  early  part  of  it  with  ecclesiastical  in 
terruptions,  had  been  desultory  and  unsatis 
fying.  He  should  of  course  see  much  of 
Rose  during  her  stay  in  Naples,  for  he  had 
no  intention  of  leaving  it  while  she  re 
mained  ;  but  the  opportunity  of  having  her 
to  himself  might  not  re-occur,  and  he  had 
certain  things  to  say  to  her  which  could  not 
be  said  under  any  other  condition.  So 
many  opportunities  of  various  kinds  had 
escaped  him  in  the  course  of  life  that  he 
resolved  not  to  let  this  one  slip.  On  the 
right  of  the  eastern  transept,  he  remein- 


36  TWO  BITES  AT  A  CHERRY 

bered,  was  a  heavenly  little  chapel  —  the 
chapel  of  the  Seripandis  —  where  they 
might  converse  without  restraint,  if  once 
they  could  get  there. 

Watching  his  chance,  Whitelaw  began  a 
skillful  oblique  movement,  and  in  a  fe,w 
minutes  the  two  found  themselves  free  of 
the  crowd  and  in  front  of  a  gilded  iron 
fencing,  the  gate  of  which  stood  open. 

"  This  is  not  the  way  out !  "  exclaimed 
Rose. 

"  I  'm  aware  of  it,"  said  Whitelaw. 

*'  But  we  want  to  get  out." 

"  You  've  never  visited  the  church  before, 
have  you,  Rose  ?  " 

"No." 

"Then  you  ought  to  see  some  of  the 
chapels.  They  contain  things  by  Spagno- 
letto,  Domenichino,  and  others.  In  this 
one,  for  instance,  is  an  Assumption  by  Pe- 
rugino.  It  would  be  a  pity  to  miss  that  — 
now  you  are  on  the  spot." 

"  I  am  afraid  I  have  n't  time  for  sight 
seeing,"  she  answered,  drawing  out  a  di 
minutive  watch  and  pressing  a  spring  in 
the  stem.  "  I  Ve  an  engagement  at  ten  "  — • 


TWO  BITES  AT  A   CHERRY  37 

"Well,  that  leaves  you  more  than  half 
an  hour,"  he  interrupted,  glancing  over 
Rose's  shoulder  at  the  time-piece. 

"  But  meanwhile  Richard  will  be  search 
ing  for  me  everywhere." 

"  Then  he  can't  fail  to  find  you  here," 
said  Whitelaw  adroitly.  "  He  has  prob 
ably  given  you  up,  however,  and  gone  back 
to  the  hotel." 

"  Perhaps  he  has,"  assented  Rose  irreso 
lutely. 

"  In  which  case,  I  will  take  you  home,  or 
wherever  you  wish  to  be  taken,  when  it  is 
necessary  for  you  to  go." 

"Oh,  I'll  not  trouble  you.  The  car 
riage  was  ordered  to  wait  at  the  corner  just 
below  the  church  —  the  driver  was  not  able 
to  get  nearer.  That  was  to  be  our  point 
of  rendezvous.  I  don't  know  —  perhaps 
I  ought  to  go  now." 

Rose  stood  a  second  or  two  in  an  attitude 
of  pretty  hesitation,  with  her  hand  resting 
on  one  of  the  spear-heads  of  the  gate  ;  then 
she  stepped  into  the  chapel. 


347705 


IV 

**!T  is  not  Perugino  at  his  best,"  said 
Whitelaw,  after  a  silence ;  "  it  has  been 
restored  in  places,  and  not  well  done.  I 
like  some  of  his  smaller  canvases ;  but  I 
don't  greatly  care  for  Perugino." 

"  Then  why  on  earth  have  you  dragged 
me  in  here  to  see  it?"  cried  Rose. 

"  Because  I  care  for  you,"  he  answered, 
smiling  at  the  justice  of  her  swift  wrath. 
As  he  turned  away  from  the  painting,  his 
countenance  became  grave. 

"  You  have  an  original  way  of  showing 
it.  If  I  cared  for  any  one,  I  would  n't  pick 
out  objects  of  no  interest  for  her  to  look 
at." 

"  Frankly,  Eose,  I  was  not  willing  to  let 
you  go  so  soon.  I  wanted  a  quiet  half 
hour's  talk  with  you.  I  had  two  or  three 
serious  things  to  say  —  things  that  have 
long  been  on  my  mind  —  and  a  chapel 


TWO  SITES  AT  A  CHERRY  39 

seemed  the  only  fitting  place  to  say  them 
in." 

This  rather  solemn  exordium  caused  Rose 
to  lift  her  eyelashes  anxiously. 

"  I  want  to  speak  of  the  past,"  said 
Whitelaw. 

"  No,  do  not  let  us  speak  of  that,"  she 
protested  hurriedly. 

"  After  all  this  time,  Eose,  I  think  I  have 
a  kind  of  right  "  — 

"  No,  you  have  no  right  whatever  "  — 

—  "  to  ask  your  forgiveness." 

"  My  forgiveness  —  for  what  ?  " 

"  For  my  long  silence,  and  sullenness, 
and  brutality  generally.  It  was  n't  a  crime 
in  you  not  to  love  me  in  the  old  days,  and 
I  acted  as  if  I  regarded  it  as  one.  I  was 
without  any  justification  in  going  away  from 
you  in  the  mood  I  did  that  night." 

"  I  was  very,  very  sorry,"  said  Rose 
gently. 

"  I  should  at  once  have  accepted  the 
situation,  and  remained  your  friend.  That 
was  a  man's  part,  and  I  failed  to  play  it. 
After  a  while,  when  I  had  recovered  my 


40  TWO  BITES  AT  A  CHERRY 

reason,  it  was  too  late.  It  appears  to  be 
one  of  the  conditions,  if  not  the  sole  condi 
tion,  of  my  existence  that  I  should  be  too 
late.  The  occasion  always  slips  away  from 
me.  When  your  —  when  I  heard  of  Mr. 
Mason's  death,  if  I  had  been  another  man 
I  would  have  written  to  you,  or  sent  you 
some  sort  of  kindly  message,  for  the  old 
time's  sake.  The  impulse  to  do  so  came  to 
me  three  months  afterwards.  I  sat  down 
one  day  and  began  to  write ;  then  the  futil 
ity  and  untimeliness  of  the  whole  thing 
struck  me,  and  I  tore  up  the  letter." 

"  I  wish  you  had  not,"  said  Rose.  "  A 
word  from  you  then,  or  before  Mr.  Mason's 
death,  would  have  been  welcome  to  me.  I 
was  never  willing  to  lose  your  friendship. 
After  your  first  return  from  Europe,  and 
you  were  seeing  something  of  your  own 
country,  as  every  American  ought  to  do,  I 
hoped  that  you  would  visit  San  Francisco. 
I  greatly  desired  that  you  should  come  and 
tell  me,  of  your  free  will,  that  I  was  not  to 
blame.  If  I  had  been,  perhaps  I  would  not 
have  cared." 


TWO  BITES  AT  A   CHERRY  41 

"  You  were  blameless  from  beginning  to 
end.  I  do  not  believe  you  ever  said  or  did 
an  insincere  thing  in  your  life,  Rose.  I 
simply  misunderstood.  The  whole  story  lies 
in  that.  You  were  magnanimous  to  waste 
any  thought  whatever  upon  me.  When  I 
reflect  on  my  own  ungenerous  attitude,  I  am 
ashamed  to  beg  your  pardon." 

"  I  have  not  anything  to  forgive,"  Rose 
replied ;  and  then  she  added,  looking  at  him 
with  a  half  rueful  smile,  "  I  suppose  it  was 
unavoidable,  under  the  circumstances,  that 
we  should  touch  on  this  matter.  Perhaps 
it  was  the  only  way  to  exorcise  the  ghost 
of  the  past ;  at  all  events,  I  am  glad  that 
you  've  said  what  you  have  ;  and  now  let  it 
go.  Tell  me  about  yourself." 

"  I  wish  I  could.  There 's  no  more  bio 
graphy  to  me  than  if  I  were  Shakespeare." 

"  What  have  you  done  all  this  while? " 

"  Nothing." 

"  Where  have  you  been  ?  " 

"  Everywhere." 

"  No  pursuit,  no  study,  no  profession  ?  " 

"  Oh,  yes ;  I  am  a  professional  nomad  — • 


42  TWO  BITES  AT  A  CHERRY 

an  alien  wherever  I  go.  I  'm  an  English 
man  in  America,  and  an  American  in  Eng 
land.  They  don't  let  up  on  me  in  either 
country." 

"  Is  n't  there  a  kind  of  vanity  in  self- 
disparagement,  my  friend?  Seriously,  if 
you  are  not  doing  your  own  case  injustice, 
has  n't  this  been  a  rather  empty  career  ?  A 
colonel  at  twenty-four  —  and  nothing  ever 
after!" 

"  Precisely  —  just  as  if  I  had  been  killed 
at  Antietam."  He  wanted  to  say,  "on 
Beacon  Hill." 

"  With  your  equipment,  every  path  was 
open  to  you.  Most  men  have  to  earn  their 
daily  bread  with  one  hand,  while  they  are 
working  for  higher  things  with  the  other. 
You  had  only  the  honors  to  struggle  for. 
To  give  up  one's  native  land,  and  spend 
years  in  aimless  wandering  from  place  to 
place  —  it  seems  downright  wicked." 

"  I  've  had  some  conscience  in  the  mat 
ter,"  pleaded  Whitelaw  —  "I  might  have 
written  books  of  travel  and  made  a  stock- 
company  of  my  ennui" 


TWO  SITES  AT  A  CHERRY  43 

"  You  ought  to  have  married,  Marc,"  said 
Rose  sententiously. 

"I?"  Whitelaw  stared  at  her.  How 
could  Rose  say  a  thing  like  that ! 

"  Every  man  ought  to  marry,"  she  sup 
plemented. 

"  I  admit  the  general  proposition,"  he 
returned  slowly,  "  but  I  object  to  the  per 
sonal  application.  To  the  mass  of  mankind 
—  meaning  also  womankind  —  marriage 
may  be  the  only  possible  thing ;  but  to  the 
individual,  it  may  be  the  one  thing  impos 
sible.  I  would  put  the  formula  this  way : 
Every  one  ought  to  wish  to  marry;  some 
ought  to  be  allowed  to  marry ;  and  others 
ought  to  marry  twice  —  to  make  the  aver 
age  good." 

"  That  sounds  Shakespearean  —  like  your 
biography ;  but  I  don't  think  I  have  quite 
caught  the  idea." 

"Perhaps  it  got  tangled  in  the  expres 
sion,"  said  Whitelaw.  "  It  was  my  purpose 
to  pay  a  handsome  tribute  to  matrimony, 
and  to  beg  to  be  excused." 

Rose  remained  silent  a  moment,  with  one 


44  TWO  BITES  AT  A  CHERRY 

finger  pressed  against  her  cheek,  making  a 
little  round  white  dent  in  it,  and  her  eyes 
fixed  upon  the  kneeling  figure  of  Cardinal 
Carafa  at  the  left  of  Perugino's  picture. 
Then  she  turned,  and  fixed  her  eyes  upon 
Whitelaw's  figure. 

"  Have  you  never,"  she  asked,  "  have  you 
never,  in  all  your  journeyings,  met  a  woman 
whom  you  liked  ?  " 

"  I  cannot  answer  you,"  he  replied 
soberly,  "  without  treading  on  forbidden 
ground.  May  I  do  that?  When  I  first 
came  abroad  I  fancy  I  rather  hated  women 
—  that  was  one  of  the  mild  manifestations 
of  my  general  insanity.  Later,  my  hatred 
changed  to  morbid  fastidiousness.  My  early 
education  had  spoiled  me.  I  have,  of  course, 
met  many  admirable  women,  and  admired 
them  —  at  a  safe  distance." 

"And  thrown  away  your  opportunities." 
"But  if  I  loved  no  one?" 
"  Admiration  would  have  served." 
"  I  do  not  agree  with  you,  Rose." 
"  A  man  may  do  worse  than  make  what 
the  world  calls  a  not  wholly  happy  mar 
riage." 


TWO   BITES  AT  A   CHERRY  45 

Whitelaw  glanced  at  her  out  of  the 
corner  of  his  eye.  Was  that  an  allusion  to 
the  late  Richard  Mason?  The  directness 
was  characteristic  of  Rose ;  but  the  remark 
was  a  trifle  too  direct  for  convenance.  If 
there  were  any  esoteric  intent  in  the  words, 
her  face  did  not  betray  it.  But  women  can 
look  less  self-conscious  than  men. 

"It  seems  to  me,"  she  went  on,  "that 
even  an  unromantic,  commonplace  union 
would  have  been  better  than  the  lonely, 
irresponsible  life  you  have  led,  accepting 
your  own  statement  of  it  —  which  I  do  not 
wholly.  A  man  should  have  duties  outside 
of  himself ;  without  them  he  is  a  mere  bal 
loon,  inflated  with  thin  egotism  and  drifting 
nowhere." 

"I  don't  accept  the  balloon,"  protested 
Whitelaw,  not  taking  kindly  to  Rose's  met 
aphor.  "  That  presupposes  a  certain  inter 
nal  specific  buoyancy  which  I  have  not,  if 
I  ever  had  it.  My  type  in  the  inanimate 
kingdom  would  be  a  diving-machine  con 
tinually  going  down  into  wrecks  in  which 
there  is  apparently  nothing  to  bring  up.  I 


46  TWO  BITES  AT  A   CHERRY 

would  have  it  ultimately  find  the  one  pre 
cious  ingot  in  the  world." 

"  Oh,  Marc,"  cried  Rose  earnestly,  with 
just  a  diverting  little  touch  of  maternal  so 
licitude  in  the  gesture  she  made,  "  oh,  Marc, 
I  hope  some  day  to  see  you  happily  mar 
ried." 

"  You  don't  think  it  too  late,  then? " 

"Too  late?  Why,  you  are  only  forty- 
three  ;  and  what  if  you  were  seventy-three  ? 
On  a  Vage  de  son  cceur." 

"  Mine  throws  no  light  on  the  subject," 
said  Whitelaw,  with  a  thrill  which  he  in 
stantly  repressed.  "  I  suspect  that  my  heart 
must  be  largely  feminine,  for  it  refuses  to 
tell  me  its  real  age.  At  any  rate,  I  do  not 
trust  it.  Just  now  it  is  trying  to  pass  itself 
off  for  twenty-five  or  thirty." 

From  time  to  time  in  the  progress  of  this 
conversation  a  shadow,  not  attributable  to 
any  of  the  overhanging  sculpture  of  the 
little  Gothic  chapel,  had  rested  on  White- 
law's  countenance.  He  had  been  assailed 
by  strange  surprises  and  conflicting  doubts. 
Five  or  ten  minutes  before,  the  idea  of 


TWO  BITES  AT  A   CHERRY  47 

again  falling  in  love  with  Rose  had  made 
him  smile.  But  was  he  not  doing  it,  had  he 
not  done  it,  or,  rather,  had  he  not  always 
loved  her  —  more  or  less  unconsciously  ? 
And  Rose?  Her  very  candor  perplexed 
and  baffled  him,  as  formerly.  She  had  al 
ways  been  a  stout  little  Puritan,  with  her 
sense  of  duty ;  but  that  did  not  adequately 
explain  the  warmth  with  which  she  had 
reproved  him  for  his  aimless  way  of  life. 
Why  should  his  way  of  life  so  deeply  con 
cern  her,  unless  .  .  .  unless  ...  In  cer 
tain  things  she  had  said  there  had  been  a 
significance  that  seemed  perfectly  clear  to 
him,  though  it  had  not  lain  upon  the  sur 
face  of  the  spoken  words.  Why  had  she 
questioned  him  so  mquisitorially  ?  Why 
had  she  desired  to  know  if  he  had  formed 
any  new  lines  of  attachment  ?  That  indirect 
reference  to  her  own  unfortunate  marriage  ? 
And  then  —  though  she  explained  it  lightly 
—  had  she  not  worn  his  boyish  gift  on  her 
bosom  through  all  those  years?  The  sug 
gestion  that  they  should  return  home  on  the 
same  steamer  contained  in  itself  a  whole 


48  TWO  BITES  AT  A   CHERRY 

little  drama  of  likelihoods.  What  if  destiny 
had  brought  him  and  Rose  together  at  last  I 
He  did  not  dare  think  of  it ;  he  did  not 
dare  acknowledge  to  himself  that  he  wished 
it,  though  he  knew  he  did. 

Whitelaw  was  now  standing  in  the  centre 
of  the  contracted  apartment,  a  few  feet  from 
his  companion,  and  looking  at  her  medita 
tively.  The  cloud  was  gone  from  his  brow, 
and  a  soft  light  had  come  into  the  clear 
gray  eyes.  Her  phrase  curled  itself  cun 
ningly  about  his  heart  —  on  a  Vage  de  son 
coeurf  He  was  afraid  to  speak  again,  lest 
an  uncontrollable  impulse  should  hurry  him 
into  speaking  of  his  love ;  and  that  he  felt 
would  indeed  be  precipitate.  But  the  si 
lence  which  had  followed  his  last  remark 
was  growing  awkwardly  long.  He  must 
break  it  with  some  platitude,  if  he  could 
summon  one. 

"  Now  that  my  anatomization  is  ended," 
he  said,  tentatively,  "is  it  not  your  turn, 
Rose  ?  I  have  made  a  poor  showing,  as  I 
warned  you  I  should." 

"My  life  has  been  fuller  than  yours," 


TWO  BITES  AT  A   CHERRY  49 

she  returned,  bending  her  eyes  upon  him 
seriously,  "and  richer.  I  have  had  such 
duties  and  pleasures  as  fall  to  most  women, 
and  such  sorrow  as  falls  to  many.  ...  I 
have  lost  a  child." 

The  pathos  of  the  simple  words  smote 
Whitelaw  to  the  heart. 

"I  —  I  had  not  heard,"  he  faltered ;  and 
a  feeling  of  infinite  tenderness  for  her  came 
over  him.  If  he  had  dared  he  would  have 
gone  to  Rose  and  put  his  arm  around  her ; 
but  he  did  not  dare.  He  stood  riveted  to 
the  marble  floor,  gazing  at  her  mutely. 

"  I  did  not  mean  to  refer  to  that,"  she 
said,  looking  up,  with  a  lingering  dimness 
in  the  purple  lashes.  "No,  don't  let  us 
talk  any  more  of  the  past.  Speak  to  me  of 
something  else,  please." 

"  The  future,"  said  Whitelaw ;  "  that  can 
give  us  no  pain  —  until  it  comes,  and  is 
gone.  What  are  your  plans  for  the  sum 
mer?" 

"We  shall  travel.  I  want  Richard  to 
see  as  much  as  he  can  before  he  is  tied 
down  to  his  studies,  poor  fellow ! " 


50  TWO  SITES  AT  A   CHERRY 

"  Where  do  you  intend  to  leave  him  at 
school  ?  "  inquired  Whitelaw,  with  a  quite 
recent  interest  in  Bichard. 

"At  Heidelberg  or  Leipsic  —  it  is  not 
decided." 

"  And  meanwhile  what 's  to  be  your  route 
of  travel?" 

"We  shall  go  to  Sweden  and  Norway, 
and  perhaps  to  Russia.  I  don't  know  why, 
but  it  has  been  one  of  the  dreams  of  my  life 
to  see  the  great  fair  at  Nijnii-Novgorod." 

"  It  is  worth  seeing,"  said  Whitelaw. 

*'  It  will  be  at  its  height  in  August  —  a 
convenient  time  for  us.  We  could  scarcely 
expect  to  reach  St.  Petersburg  before  Au 
gust." 

"  I  have  just  returned  from  Russia,"  he 
said,  "  after  three  years  of  it." 

"Then  you  can  give  me  some  sugges 
tions." 

"  Traveling  there  has  numerous  draw 
backs  unless  one  knows  the  language. 
French,  which  serves  everywhere  in  West 
ern  Europe,  is  nearly  useless  in  the  majority 
of  places.  All  educated  Russians  of  course 


TWO  BITES  AT  A  CHERRY  51 

speak  French  or  German ;  but  railway- 
guards  and  drosky-drivers,  and  the  persons 
with  whom  the  mere  tourist  is  brought  most 
in  contact,  know  only  Russian." 

"  But  we  've  an  excellent  courier,"  re 
joined  Rose,  "who  speaks  all  the  tongues  of 
Babel.  His  English  is  something  superb." 

"  When  do  you  start  northward  ?  "  asked 
Whitelaw,  turning  on  her  quickly,  with  a 
sudden  subtile  prescience  of  defeated  pur 
pose. 

"  To-morrow." 

"  To-morrow !  "  he  echoed,  in  consterna 
tion.  "  Then  I  am  to  see  nothing  of  you ! " 

"  If  you  've  no  engagement  for  to-night, 
come  to  the  hotel.  I  should  be  very  glad 
to"  — 

"  Where  are  you  staying  ?  " 

"At  the  United  States,  on  the  Chiata- 
mone,  like  true  patriots." 

"  I  have  no  engagement,"  said  W^hitelaw 
bewilderedly. 

Rose  to  leave  Naples  to-morrow !  That 
was  a  death-blow  to  all  his  plans  —  the  ex 
cursions  in  the  environs,  and  all !  She  was 


62  TWO  SITES  AT  A  CHERRY 

slipping  through  his  fingers  again  ...  he 
was  losing  her  forever !  There  was  no  time 
for  temporizing  or  hesitation.  He  must 
never  speak,  or  speak  now.  Perhaps  it 
would  not  seem  abrupt  or  even  strange  to 
her.  If  so,  Rose  should  remember  that  his 
position  as  a  lover  was  exceptional  —  he 
had  done  his  wooing  fifteen  years  before ! 
He  confessed  to  himself  —  and  he  had  often 
confessed  it  to  that  same  severe  critic  of 
manners  —  that  possibly  his  wooing  had 
been  somewhat  lacking  in  dash  and  persist 
ence  then.  But  to-day  he  would  win  her, 
as  he  might  perhaps  have  won  her  years 
ago,  if  he  had  not  been  infirm  of  purpose, 
or  pigeon-livered,  or  too  proud  —  which 
was  it  ?  He  had  let  a  single  word  repulse 
him,  when  the  chances  were  he  might  have 
carried  her  by  storm,  or  taken  her  by  siege. 
How  young  he  must  have  seemed,  even  in 
her  young  eyes!  Now  he  had  experience 
and  knowledge  of  the  world,  and  would  not 
be  denied.  The  doubts  and  misgivings  that 
had  clouded  his  mind  for  the  last  quarter 
of  an  hour  were  blown  away  like  meadow- 


TWO  BITES  AT  A   CHERRY  53 

mists  at  sunrise.  At  last  he  saw  clearly. 
He  loved  Rose  —  he  had  never  really  loved 
her  until  this  moment !  For  other  men 
there  were  other  methods ;  there  was  but 
one  course  for  him.  No ;  he  would  not  go 
to  the  hotel  that  night  —  as  a  suitor.  His 
fate  should  be  sealed  then  and  there  in  the 
chapel  of  the  Seripandis. 

Whitelaw  straightened  himself,  wavering 
for  an  instant,  like  a  foresail  when  it  loses 
the  wind ;  then  he  crossed  the  narrow  strip 
of  tessellated  pavement  that  lay  between 
him  and  Rose,  and  stood  directly  in  front 
of  her. 

"  Rose,"  he  said,  and  there  was  a  strange 
pallor  creeping  into  his  cheeks,  "  there  have 
been  two  miracles  wrought  in  this  church 
to-day.  It  is  not  only  St.  Januarius  who 
has,  in  a  manner,  come  to  life  again.  I, 
too,  have  come  to  life.  I  have  returned 
once  more  to  the  world  of  living  men  and 
women.  Do  not  send  me  back !  Let  me 
take  you  and  your  boy  to  Russia,  Rose  !  " 

Rose  gave  a  start,  and  cast  a  swift,  hor 
rified  look  at  Whitelaw's  face. 


64  TWO  BITES  AT  A  CEERRT 

"  Marc  !  "  she  cried,  convulsively  grasp- 
ing  the  wrist  of  the  hand  which  he  had 
held  out  to  her,  "  is  it  possible  you  have  n't 
heard  —  has  no  one  told  you  —  don't  you 
know  that  I  have  married  again  "  — 

She  stopped  abruptly,  and  released  his 
wrist. 

A  man  in  a  frayed,  well-brushed  coat, 
with  a  courier's  satchel  depending  from  a 
strap  over  his  shoulder,  was  standing  out 
side  the  iron  grille  which  separated  the 
chapel  from  the  main  church. 

"Madama,"  said  the  courier,  as  he  re 
spectfully  approached  through  the  gate,  "  it 
is  ten  o'clock.  The  Signer  Schuyler  and 
Master  Richard  are  waiting  with  the  car 
riage  at  the  corner  of  the  Strada  dell'  An- 
tiogolia.  They  bade  me  inform  Madama." 


"FOR  BRAVERY  ON    THE    FIELD 
OF  BATTLE" 


THE  recruiting-office  at  River-mouth  was 
in  a  small,  un painted,  weather-stained  build 
ing  on  Anchor  Street,  not  far  from  the 
custom-house.  The  tumble-down  shell  had 
long  remained  tenantless,  and  now,  with  its 
mouse-colored  exterior,  easily  lent  itself  to 
its  present  requirements  as  a  little  military 
mouse-trap.  In  former  years  it  had  been 
occupied  as  a  thread-and-needle  and  candy 
shop  by  one  Dame  Trippew.  All  such 
petty  shops  in  the  town  were  always  kept 
by  old  women,  and  these  old  women  were 
always  styled  dames.  It  is  to  be  lamented 
that  they  and  their  innocent  traffic  have 
vanished  into  the  unknown. 

The  interior  of  the  building,  consisting 


56  FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD 

of  one  room  and  an  attic  covered  by  a  lean- 
to  roof,  had  undergone  no  change  beyond 
the  removal  of  Dame  Trippew's  pathetic 
stock  at  the  time  of  her  bankruptcy.  The 
narrow  counter,  painted  pea-green  and  di 
vided  in  the  centre  by  a  swinging  gate,  still 
stretched  from  wall  to  wall  at  the  further 
end  of  the  room,  and  behind  the  counter 
rose  a  series  of  small  wooden  drawers,  which 
now  held  nothing  but  a  fleeting  and  inac 
curate  memory  of  the  lavender,  and  penny 
royal,  and  the  other  sweet  herbs  that  used 
to  be  deposited  in  them.  Even  the  tiny 
cow-bell,  which  once  served  to  warn  Dame 
Trippew  of  the  advent  of  a  customer,  still 
hung  from  a  bit  of  curved  iron  on  the  inner 
side  of  the  street  door,  and  continued  to 
give  out  a  petulant,  spasmodic  jingle  when 
ever  that  door  was  opened,  however  cau 
tiously.  If  the  good  soul  could  have 
returned  to  the  scene  of  her  terrestrial 
commerce,  she  might  have  resumed  busi 
ness  at  the  old  stand  without  making  any 
alterations  whatever.  Everything  remained 
precisely  as  she  had  left  it  at  the  instant  of 


FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD        57 

her  exit.  But  a  wide  gulf  separated  Dame 
Trippew  from  the  present  occupant  of  the 
premises.  Dame  Trippew's  slight  figure, 
with  its  crisp,  snowy  cap  and  apron,  and 
steel-bowed  spectacles,  had  been  replaced 
by  the  stalwart  personage  of  a  sergeant  of 
artillery  in  the  regular  army,  between  whose 
overhanging  red  mustache  and  the  faint 
white  down  that  had  of  late  years  come  to 
Dame  Trippew's  upper  lip,  it  would  have 
been  impossible  to  establish  a  parallel.  The 
only  things  these  two  might  have  claimed 
in  common  were  a  slackness  of  trade  and  a 
liking  for  the  aromatic  Virginia  leaf,  though 
Dame  Trippew  had  taken  hers  in  a  dainty 
idealistic  powder,  and  the  sergeant  took  his 
in  realistic  plug  through  the  medium  of  an 
aggressive  clay  pipe. 

In  spite  of  the  starry  shield,  supported 
by  two  crossed  cannon  cut  out  of  tin  and 
surmounted  by  the  national  bird  in  the 
same  material,  which  hung  proudly  over 
the  transom  outside  ;  in  spite  of  the  drum 
mer-boy  from  the  fort,  who  broke  the  si 
lence  into  slivers  at  intervals  throughout 


68  FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD 

the  day ;  in  brief,  in  spite  of  his  own 
martial  bearing  and  smart  uniform,  the 
sergeant  found  trade  very  slack.  At  River- 
mouth  the  war  with  Mexico  was  not  a 
popular  undertaking.  If  there  were  any 
heroic  blood  left  in  the  old  town  by  the  sea, 
it  appeared  to  be  in  no  hurry  to  come  for 
ward  and  get  itself  shed.  There  were 
hours  in  which  Sergeant  O'Neil  despaired 
of  his  country.  But  by  degrees  the  situ 
ation  brightened,  recruits  began  to  come  in, 
and  finally  the  town  and  the  outlying  dis 
tricts  —  chiefly  the  outlying  districts  — 
managed  to  furnish  a  company  for  the 
State  regiment.  One  or  two  prominent 
citizens  had  been  lured  by  commissions  as 
officers ;  but  neither  of  the  two  River- 
mouthians  who  went  in  as  privates  was  of 
the  slightest  civic  importance.  One  of 
these  men  was  named  James  Dutton. 

Why  on  earth  James  Dutton  wanted  to 
go  to  the  war  was  a  puzzle  to  the  few  towns- 
folks  who  had  any  intimate  acquaintance 
with  the  young  man.  Intimate  acquaint^ 
ance  is  perhaps  too  strong  a  term ;  for 


FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD        59 

though  Dutton  was  born  in  the  town  and 
had  always  lived  there,  he  was  more  or  less 
a  stranger  to  those  who  knew  him  best. 
Comrades  he  had,  of  course,  in  a  manner : 
the  boys  with  whom  he  had  formerly  gone 
to  the  public  school,  and  two  or  three  ma- 
turer  persons  whose  acquaintance  he  had 
contracted  later  in  the  way  of  trade.  But 
with  these  he  could  scarcely  be  said  to  be 
intimate.  James  Dutton's  rather  isolated 
condition  was  not  in  consequence  of  any 
morbid  or  uncouth  streak  in  his  mental 
make-up.  He  was  of  a  shy  and  gentle 
nature,  and  his  sedentary  occupation  had 
simply  let  the  habit  of  solitude  and  un- 
sociability  form  a  shell  about  him.  Dut 
ton  was  a  shoemaker  and  cobbler,  like  his 
father  before  him ;  plying  his  craft  in  the 
shabby  cottage  where  he  was  born  and  had 
lived  ever  since,  at  the  foot  of  a  narrow 
lane  leading  down  to  the  river  —  a  lonely, 
doleful  sort  of  place,  enlivened  with  a  bit 
of  shelving  sand  where  an  ancient  fisher 
man  occasionally  came  to  boil  lobsters. 
In  the  open  lots  facing  the  unhinged 


60  FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD 

gate  was  an  old  relinquished  tannery  that 
still  flavored  the  air  with  decayed  hemlock 
and  fir  bark,  which  lay  here  and  there  in 
dull-red  patches,  killing  the  grass.  The 
undulations  of  a  colonial  graveyard  broke 
tamely  against  the  western  base  of  the 
house.  Headstones  and  monuments  —  if 
there  had  ever  been  any  monuments  —  had 
melted  away.  Only  tradition  and  those 
slowly  subsiding  wave-like  ridges  of  graves 
revealed  the  character  of  the  spot.  Within 
the  memory  of  man  nobody  had  been 
dropped  into  that  Dead  Sea.  The  But 
tons,  father  and  son,  had  dwelt  here  nearly 
twenty-four  years.  They  owned  the  shanty. 
The  old  man  was  now  dead,  having  laid 
down  his  awl  and  lapstone  just  a  year  be 
fore  the  rise  of  those  international  compli 
cations  which  resulted  in  the  appearance  of 
Sergeant  O'Neil  in  Rivermouth,  where  he 
immediately  tacked  up  the  blazoned  aegis 
of  the  United  States  over  the  doorway  of 
Dame  Trippew's  little  shop. 

As  has   been    indicated,   the   war  with 
Mexico  was  not  looked  upon  with  favor  by 


FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD        61 

the  inhabitants  of  Kivermouth,  who  clearly 
perceived  its  underlying  motive  —  the  ex 
tension  of  slave  territory.  The  abolition 
element  in  the  town  had  instantly  been 
blown  to  a  white  heat.  Moreover,  war  in 
itself,  excepting  as  a  defensive  measure  or 
on  a  point  of  honor,  seemed  rather  poor 
business  to  the  thrifty  Rivermouthians. 
They  were  wholly  of  the  opinion  of  Birdo- 
fredom  Sawin,  that 

*  Nimepunce  a  day  f er  killin'  folks  comes  kind  o'  low 
fer  murder." 

That  old  Nehemiah  Dutton's  son  should 
have  any  interest  one  way  or  the  other  in 
the  questions  involved  was  inconceivable, 
and  the  morning  he  presented  himself  at 
the  recruiting-office  a  strong  ripple  of  sur 
prise  ran  over  the  group  of  idlers  that  hung 
day  after  day  around  the  door  of  the  crazy 
tenement,  drawn  thither  by  the  drum-taps, 
and  a  morbid  sense  of  gunpowder  in  the 
air.  These  idlers  were  too  sharp  or  too  un 
patriotic  to  enlist  themselves,  but  they  had 
unbounded  enthusiasm  for  those  who  did. 
After  a  moment's  hesitation,  they  cheered 
Jemmy  Dutton  handsomely. 


62  FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD 

On  the  afternoon  of  his  enlistment,  he 
was  met  near  the  post-office  by  Marcellus 
Palfrey,  the  sexton  of  the  Old  Granite 
Church. 

"  What  are  you  up  to,  anyhow,  Jemmy?  " 
asked  Palfrey.  "  What 's  your  idee  ?  " 

"  My  idea  is,"  replied  Dutton,  "  that  I  've 
never  been  able  to  live  freely  and  respec 
tably,  as  I  've  wanted  to  live ;  but  I  mean 
to  die  like  a  gentleman,  when  it  comes  to 
that." 

"  What  do  you  call  a  gentleman, 
Jemmy?" 

"  Well,  a  man  who  serves  faithfully,  and 
stands  by  to  lay  down  his  life  for  his  duty 
—  he 's  a  gentleman." 

"  That 's  so,"  said  Palfrey.  "  He  need  n't 
have  no  silver-plated  handles,  nor  much 
outside  finish,  if  he 's  got  a  satin  linin'. 
He 's  one  of  God's  men." 

What  really  sent  James  Dutton  to  the 
war?  Had  he  some  unformulated  and 
hitherto  unsuspected  dream  of  military 
glory,  or  did  he  have  an  eye  to  supposable 
gold  ingots  piled  up  in  the  sub-basement  of 


FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD        63 

the  halls  of  the  Montezumas  ?  Was  it  a 
case  of  despised  love,  or  was  he  simply  tired 
of  reheeling  and  resoling  the  boots  of  River- 
mouth  folk ;  tired  to  death  of  the  river  that 
twice  a  day  crept  up  to  lap  the  strip  of 
sandy  beach  at  the  foot  of  Nutter's  Lane ; 
tired  to  death  of  being  alone,  and  poor,  and 
aimless  ?  His  motive  is  not  positively  to  be 
known,  only  to  be  guessed  at.  We  shall 
not  trouble  ourselves  about  it.  Neither 
shall  the  war,  which  for  a  moment  casts  a 
lurid  light  on  his  figure,  delay  us  long.  It 
was  a  tidy,  comfortable  little  war,  not  with 
out  picturesque  aspects.  Out  of  its  flame 
and  smoke  leaped  two  or  three  fine  names 
that  dazzled  men's  eyes  awhile  ;  and  among 
the  fortunate  was  a  silent  young  lieutenant 
of  infantry  —  a  taciturn,  but  not  unami- 
able  young  lieutenant  —  who  was  afterward 
destined  to  give  the  name  of  a  great  gen 
eral  into  the  keeping  of  history  forever. 
Wrapped  up  somewhere  in  this  Mexican 
war  is  the  material  for  a  brief  American 
epic ;  but  it  is  not  to  be  unrolled  and  recited 
here. 


n 

WITH  the  departure  of  Our  Country's 
Gallant  Defenders,  as  they  were  loosely 
denominated  by  some  —  the  Idiots,  as  they 
were  compactly  described  by  others  —  mo 
notony  again  settled  down  upon  Ri  vermouth. 
Sergeant  O'Neil's  heraldic  emblems  disap 
peared  from  Anchor  Street,  and  the  quick 
rattle  of  the  tenor  drum  at  five  o'clock  in 
the  morning  no  longer  disturbed  the  repose 
of  peace-loving  citizens.  The  tide  of  battle 
rolled  afar,  and  its  echoes  were  not  of  a 
quality  to  startle  the  drowsy  old  seaport. 
Indeed,  it  had  little  at  stake.  Only  four 
men  had  gone  from  the  town  proper.  One, 
Captain  Kittery,  died  before  reaching  the 
seat  of  war ;  one  deserted  on  the  way ;  one, 
Lieutenant  Bangs,  was  sent  home  invalided ; 
and  only  James  Dutton  was  left  to  represent 
the  land  force  of  his  native  town.  He  I 
might  as  well  have  died  or  deserted,  for  he 
was  promptly  forgotten. 


FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD        65 

From  time  to  time  accounts  of  battles 
and  bombardments  were  given  in  the  col 
umns  of  "The  Kivermouth  Barnacle,"  on 
which  occasions  the  Stars  and  Stripes,  held 
in  the  claws  of  a  spread  eagle,  decorated 
the  editorial  page  —  a  cut  which  until  then 
had  been  used  only  to  celebrate  the  blood 
less  victories  of  the  ballot.  The  lists  of 
dead,  wounded,  and  missing  were  always 
read  with  interest  or  anxiety,  as  might  hap 
pen,  for  one  had  friends  and  country  ac 
quaintance,  if  not  fellow-townsmen,  with 
the  army  on  the  Rio  Grande.  Meanwhile 
nobody  took  the  trouble  to  bestow  a  thought 
on  James  Button.  He  was  as  remote  and 
shadowy  in  men's  memories  as  if  he  had 
been  killed  at  Thermopylae  or  Bunker's 
Hill.  But  one  day  the  name  of  James  Dut- 
ton  blazed  forth  in  a  despatch  that  electri 
fied  the  community.  At  the  storming  of 
Chapultepec,  Private  James  Dutton,  Com 
pany  K,  Rivermouth,  had  done  a  very 
valorous  deed.  He  had  crawled  back  to 
a  plateau  on  the  heights,  from  which  the 
American  troops  had  been  driven,  and  had 


66  FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD 

brought  off  his  captain,  who  had  been  mo 
mentarily  stunned  by  the  wind  of  a  round 
shot.  Not  content  with  that,  Private  Dut- 
ton  had  returned  to  the  dangerous  plateau, 
and,  under  a  heavy  fire,  had  secured  a  small 
field-piece  which  was  about  to  fall  into  the 
hands  of  the  enemy.  Later  in  the  day  this 
little  howitzer  did  eminent  service.  After 
touching  on  one  or  two  other  minor  matters, 
the  despatch  remarked,  incidentally,  that 
Private  James  Dutton  had  had  his  left  leg 
blown  off. 

The  name  of  James  Dutton  was  instantly 
on  every  lip  in  town.  Citizens  who  had  pre 
viously  ignored  his  existence,  or  really  had 
not  been  aware  of  it,  were  proud  of  him. 
The  Hon.  Jedd  Deane  said  that  he  had 
long  regarded  James  Dutton  as  a  young 
man  of  great  promise,  a  —  er  —  most  re 
markable  young  person,  in  short;  one  of 
the  kind  with  much  —  er  —  latent  ability. 
Postmaster  Mugridge  observed,  with  the 
strong  approval  of  those  who  heard  him, 
that  young  Dutton  was  nobody's  fool, 
though  what  especial  wisdom  Dutton  had 


FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD        67 

evinced  in  having  his  leg  blown  off  was  not 
clear.  Captain  Tewksberry,  commanding 
the  local  militia  company,  the  Rivermouth 
Tigers,  was  convinced  that  no  one  who  had 
not  carefully  studied  "  Scott's  Tactics " 
could  have  brought  away  that  gun  under 
the  circumstances.  "Here,  you  will  ob 
serve,  was  the  exposed  flank  of  the  heights, 
there,  behind  the  chevaux-de-frise,  lay  the 
enemy,"  etc.,  etc.  Dutton's  former  school 
fellows  began  to  remember  that  there  had 
always  been  something  tough  and  gritty  in 
Jim  Dutton.  The  event  was  one  not  to  be 
passed  over  by  Parson  Wibird  Hawkins, 
who  made  a  most  direct  reference  to  it  in 
his  Sunday's  sermon  —  Job  xxxix.  25  : 
"He  saith  among  the  trumpets,  Ha,  ha; 
and  he  smelleth  the  battle  afar  off,  the 
thunder  of  the  captains,  and  the  shouting." 
After  the  first  burst  of  local  pride  and 
enthusiasm  had  exhausted  itself  over  young 
Dutton's  brilliant  action,  the  grim  fact  con 
nected  with  young  Dutton's  left  leg  began 
to  occupy  the  public  mind.  The  despatch 
had  vaguely  hinted  at  amputation,  and  had 


68  FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD 

stopped  there.  If  his  leg  had  been  shot 
away,  was  it  necessary  that  the  rest  of 
him  should  be  amputated  ?  In  the  opinion 
of  Schoolmaster  Dennett,  such  treatment 
seemed  almost  tautological.  However,  all 
was  presumably  over  by  this  time.  Had 
poor  Dutton  died  under  the  operation  ?  So 
licitude  on  that  point  was  wide-spread  and 
genuine.  Later  official  intelligence  relieved 
the  stress  of  anxiety.  Private  Dutton  had 
undergone  the  operation  successfully  and 
with  great  fortitude;  he  was  doing  well, 
and  as  soon  as  it  was  possible  for  him  to 
bear  transportation  he  was  to  be  sent  home. 
He  had  been  complimented  in  the  com 
manding  officer's  report  of  the  action  to 
headquarters,  and  General  Winfield  Scott 
had  sent  Private  Dutton  a  silver  medal 
"for  bravery  on  the  field  of  battle."  If 
the  Government  had  wanted  one  or  two 
hundred  volunteers  from  Bivermouth,  that 
week  was  the  week  to  get  them. 

Then  intervened  a  long  silence  touching 
James  Dutton.  This  meant  feverish  nights 
and  weary  days  in  hospital,  and  finally 


FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD        69 

blissful  convalescence,  when  the  scent  of 
the  orange  and  magnolia  blossoms  blown  in 
at  the  open  window  seemed  to  James  Dut- 
ton  a  richer  recompense  than  he  deserved 
for  his  martyrdom.  At  last  he  was  in  con 
dition  to  be  put  on  board  a  transport  for 
New  Orleans.  Thence  a  man-of-war  was  to 
convey  him  to  Bivermouth,  where  the  ship 
was  to  be  overhauled  and  have  its  own 
wounds  doctored. 

When  it  was  announced  from  the  fort 
that  the  vessel  bearing  James  Dutton  had 
been  sighted  off  the  coast  and  would  soon 
be  in  the  Narrows,  the  town  was  thrown 
into  such  a  glow  of  excitement  as  it  had  not 
experienced  since  the  day  a  breathless  and 
bedraggled  man  on  horseback  had  dashed 
into  Rivermouth  with  the  news  that  the 
Sons  of  Liberty  in  Boston  had  pitched  the 
British  tea  overboard.  The  hero  of  Chapul- 
tepec  —  the  only  hero  Rivermouth  had  had 
since  the  colonial  period  —  was  coming  up 
the  Narrows !  It  is  odd  that  three  fourths 
of  anything  should  be  more  estimable  than 
the  whole,  supposing  the  whole  to  be  esti- 


70  FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD 

mable.  When  James  Dutton  had  all  his 
limbs  he  was  lightly  esteemed,  and  here 
was  Rivermouth  about  to  celebrate  a  frag 
ment  of  him. 

The  normally  quiet  and  unfrequented 
street  leading  down  to  the  boat-landing  was 
presently  thronged  by  Rivermouthians  — 
men,  women,  and  children.  The  arrival  of 
a  United  States  vessel  always  stirred  an 
emotion  in  the  town.  Naval  officers  were 
prime  favorites  in  aristocratic  circles,  and 
there  were  few  ships  in  the  service  that  did 
not  count  among  their  blue-jackets  one  or 
more  men  belonging  to  the  port.  Thus  all 
sea-worn  mariners  in  Uncle  Sam's  employ 
were  sure  of  both  patrician  and  democratic 
welcome  at  Rivermouth.  But  the  present 
ship  contained  an  especially  valuable  cargo. 

It  was  a  patient  and  characteristically 
undemonstrative  crowd  that  assembled  on 
the  wharf,  a  crowd  content  to  wait  an  hour 
or  more  without  a  murmur  after  the  ship 
had  dropped  anchor  in  midstream  for  the 
captain's  gig  to  be  lowered  from  the  davits. 
The  shrill  falsetto  of  the  boatswain's  whistle 


FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD        71 

suddenly  informed  those  on  shore  of  what 
was  taking  place  on  the  starboard  side,  and 
in  a  few  minutes  the  gig  came  sweeping 
across  the  blue  water,  with  James  Dutton 
seated  in  the  stern-sheets  and  looking  very 
pale.  He  sat  there,  from  time  to  time  pull- 
ing  his  blond  mustache,  evidently  embar 
rassed.  A  cheer  or  two  rose  from  the  wharf 
when  the  eight  gleaming  blades  simulta 
neously  stood  upright  in  air,  as  if  the  move 
ment  had  been  performed  by  some  mechan 
ism.  The  disembarkment  followed  in  dead 
silence,  for  the  interest  was  too  novel  and 
too  intense  to  express  itself  noisily.  Those 
nearest  to  James  Dutton  pressed  forward 
to  shake  hands  with  him,  but  this  ceremony 
had  to  be  dispensed  with  as  he  hobbled  on 
his  crutches  through  the  crowd,  piloted  by 
Postmaster  Mugridge  to  the  hack  which 
stood  in  waiting  at  the  head  of  the  wharf. 

Dutton  was  driven  directly  to  his  own 
little  cottage  in  Nutter's  Lane,  which  had 
been  put  in  order  for  his  occupancy.  The 
small  grocery  closet  had  been  filled  with 
supplies,  the  fire  had  been  lighted  in  the 


72         FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD 

diminutive  kitchen  stove,  and  the  tea-kettle 
was  twittering  on  top,  like  a  bird  on  a 
bough.  The  Hawkins  girls,  Prudence  and 
Mehitabel,  had  set  some  pansies  and  lilacs 
here  and  there  in  blue  china  mugs,  and  de 
corated  with  greenery  the  faded  daguerreo 
type  of  old  Nehemiah  Dutton,  which  hung 
like  a  slowly  dissolving  ghost  over  his  an 
cient  shoemaker's  bench.  As  James  Dutton 
hobbled  into  the  contracted  room  where  he 
had  spent  the  tedious  years  of  his  youth 
and  manhood,  he  had  to  lift  a  hand  from 
one  of  the  crutches  to  brush  away  the  tears 
that  blinded  him.  It  was  so  good  to  be  at 
home  again ! 

That  afternoon,  Dutton  held  an  informal 
reception.  There  was  a  constant  coming 
and  going  of  persons  not  in  the  habit  of 
paying  visits  in  so  unfashionable  a  neigh 
borhood  as  Nutter's  Lane.  Now  and  then  a 
townsman,  conscious  that  his  unimportance 
did  not  warrant  his  unintroduced  presence 
inside,  lounged  carelessly  by  the  door ;  and 
through  the  rest  of  the  day  several  small 
boys  turned  somersaults  and  skylarked  un« 


FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD        73 

der  the  window,  or  sat  in  rows  on  the  rail- 
fence  opposite  the  gate.  Among  others 
came  the  Hon.  Jedd  Deane,  with  his  most 
pronounced  Websterian  air — he  was  always 
oscillating  between  the  manner  of  Webster 
and  that  of  Ruf  us  Choate  —  to  pay  his  re 
spects  to  James  Dutton,  which  was  consid 
ered  a  great  compliment  indeed.  A  few 
days  later,  this  statesman  invited  Dutton  to 
dine  with  him  at  the  ancestral  mansion  in 
Mulberry  Avenue,  in  company  with  Parson 
Wibird  Hawkins,  Postmaster  Mugridge, 
and  Silas  Trefethen,  the  Collector  of  the 
Port.  It  was  intimated  that  young  Dutton 
had  handled  himself  under  this  ordeal  with 
as  much  self-possession  and  dignity  as  if  he 
had  always  dined  off  colonial  china,  and  had 
always  stirred  his  after-dinner  coffee  with  a 
spoon  manufactured  by  Paul  Revere. 

A  motion  to  give  James  Dutton  a  limited 
public  banquet,  at  which  the  politicians 
could  have  a  chance  to  unfold  their  elo 
quence,  was  discussed  and  approved  in  the 
Board  of  Selectmen,  but  subsequently  laid 
on  the  table,  it  being  reported  that  Mr. 


74  FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD 

Dutton  had  declared  that  he  would  rather 
have  his  other  leg  blown  off  than  make  a 
speech.  This  necessarily  killed  the  project, 
for  a  reply  from  him  to  the  chairman's 
opening  address  was  a  sine  qua  non. 

Life  now  opened  up  all  sunshine  to  James 
Dutton.  His  personal  surroundings  were  of 
the  humblest,  but  it  was  home,  sweet,  sweet 
home.  One  may  roam  amid  palaces  —  even 
amid  the  halls  of  the  Montezumas  —  yet, 
after  all,  one's  own  imperfect  drain  is  the 
best.  The  very  leather-parings  and  bits  of 
thread  that  had  drifted  from  the  work 
bench  into  the  front  yard,  and  seemed  to 
have  taken  root  there  like  some  strange  ex 
otic  weed,  were  a  delight  to  him.  Dutton's 
inability  to  move  about  as  in  former  years 
sometimes  irked  him,  but  everything  else 
was  pleasant.  He  resolved  to  make  the  best 
of  this  one  misfortune,  since  without  it  he 
would  never  have  been  treated  with  such 
kindness  and  consideration.  The  constant 
employment  he  found  at  his  trade  helped 
him  to  forget  that  he  had  not  two  legs.  A 
man  who  is  obliged  to  occupy  a  cobbler's 


FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD        75 

bench  day  after  day  has  no  special  need  of 
legs  at  all.  Everybody  brought  jobs  to  his 
door,  and  Dutton  had  as  much  work  as  he 
could  do.  At  times,  indeed,  he  was  forced 
to  decline  a  commission.  He  could  hardly 
credit  his  senses  when  this  occurred. 

So  life  ran  very  smoothly  with  him.  For 
the  first  time  in  his  existence  he  found  him 
self  humming  or  whistling  an  accompani 
ment  to  the  rat-tat-tat  of  his  hammer  on  the 
sole-leather.  No  hour  of  the  twenty-four 
hung  heavily  on  him.  In  the  rear  of  the 
cottage  was  a  bit  of  ground,  perhaps  forty 
feet  square,  with  an  old  elm  in  the  centre, 
under  which  Dutton  liked  to  take  his  noon 
ing.  It  was  here  he  used  to  play  years  ago, 
a  quiet,  dreamy  lad,  with  no  companions 
except  the  squirrels.  A  family  of  them  still 
inhabited  the  ancient  boughs,  and  it  amused 
him  to  remember  how  he  once  believed  that 
the  nimble  brown  creatures  belonged  to  a 
tribe  of  dwarf  Indians  who  might  attempt 
to  scalp  him  with  their  little  knives  if  they 
caught  him  out  after  dusk.  Though  his 
childhood  had  not  been  happy,  he  had 


76  FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD 

reached  a  bend  in  the  road  where  to  pause 
and  look  back  was  to  find  the  retrospect 
full  of  fairy  lights  and  coloring. 

Almost  every  evening  one  or  two  old  ac 
quaintances,  with  whom  he  had  not  been 
acquainted,  dropped  in  to  chat  with  him, 
mainly  about  the  war.  He  had  shared  in 
all  the  skirmishes  and  battles  from  Cerro 
Gordo  and  Molino  del  Key  up  to  the  cap 
ture  of  Chapultepec ;  and  it  was  something 
to  hear  of  these  matters  from  one  who  had 
been  a  part  of  what  he  saw.  It  was  con 
sidered  a  favor  to  be  allowed  to  examine  at 
short  range  that  medal  "  for  bravery  on  the 
field  of  battle."  It  was  a  kind  of  honor 
"  just  to  heft  it,"  as  somebody  said  one 
night.  There  were  visitors  upon  whom  the 
impression  was  strong  that  General  Scott 
had  made  the  medal  with  his  own  hands. 

James  Dutton  was  ever  modest  in  speak 
ing  of  his  single  personal  exploit.  He 
guessed  he  did  n't  know  what  he  was  doing 
at  the  moment  when  he  tumbled  the  how 
itzer  into  the  ravine,  from  which  the  boys 
afterward  fished  it  out.  "  You  see,  things 


FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD        77 

were  anyway  up  on  that  plateau.  The  cop 
per  bullets  were  flying  like  hailstones,  so  it 
did  n't  much  matter  where  a  fellow  went  — 
he  was  sure  to  get  peppered.  Of  course 
the  captain  could  n't  be  left  up  there  —  we 
wanted  him  for  morning  parades.  Then 
I  happened  to  see  the  little  field-piece 
stranded  among  the  chaparral.  It  was  a 
cursed  nice  little  cannon.  It  would  have 
been  a  blighting  shame  to  have  lost  it." 

"  I  suppose  you  did  n't  leave  your  heart 
down  there  along  with  the  senoriteers,  did 
you,  Jemmy  ?  "  inquired  a  town  Lovelace. 

"No,"  said  Dutton,  always  perfectly  mat 
ter  of  fact ;  "  I  left  my  leg." 

Ah,  yes ;  life  was  very  pleasant  to  him  in 
those  days ! 

Not  only  kindnesses,  but  honors  were 
showered  upon  him.  Parson  Wibird  Haw 
kins,  in  the  course  of  an  address  before  the 
Kivermouth  Historical  and  Genealogical 
Society,  that  winter,  paid  an  eloquent  tri 
bute  to  "  the  glorious  military  career  of  our 
young  townsman  "  —  which  was  no  more 
than  justice ;  for  if  a  man  who  has  had  a 


78  FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD 

limb  shot  off  in  battle  lias  not  had  a  touch 
of  glory,  then  war  is  an  imposition.  When 
ever  a  distinguished  stranger  visited  the 
town,  he  was  not  let  off  without  the  ques 
tion,  "Are  you  aware,  sir,  that  we  have 
among  us  one  of  the  heroes  of  the  late 
Mexican  war  ?  "  And  then  a  stroll  about 
town  to  the  various  points  of  historic  inter 
est  invariably  ended  at  the  unpretending 
door-step  of  Dutton's  cottage. 

At  the  celebration  of  the  first  Fourth 
of  July  following  his  return  from  Mexico, 
James  Dutton  was  pretty  nearly,  if  not 
quite,  the  chief  feature  of  the  procession, 
riding  in  an  open  barouche  immediately  be 
hind  that  of  the  Governor.  The  boys  would 
have  marched  him  all  by  himself  if  it  had 
been  possible  to  form  him  into  a  hollow 
square.  From  this  day  James  Dutton,  in 
his  faded  coat  and  battered  artillery  cap, 
was  held  an  indispensable  adjunct  to  all 
turnouts  of  a  warlike  complexion.  Nor  was 
his  fame  wholly  local.  Now  and  then,  as 
time  went  on,  some  old  comrade  of  the 
Army  of  the  Rio  Grande,  a  member  per- 


FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD          79 

haps  of  old  Company  K,  would  turn  up  in 
River-mouth  for  no  other  apparent  purpose 
than  to  smoke  a  pipe  or  so  with  Button  at 
his  headquarters  in  Nutter's  Lane.  If  he 
sometimes  chanced  to  furnish  the  caller 
with  a  dollar  or  two  of  "  the  sinews  of  war," 
it  was  nobody's  business.  The  days  on 
which  these  visits  fell  were  red-letter  days 
to  James  Dutton. 

It  was  a  proud  moment  when  he  found 
himself  one  afternoon  sitting,  at  School 
master  Dennett's  invitation,  on  the  platform 
in  the  recitation-room  of  the  Temple  Gram 
mar  School  —  sitting  on  the  very  platform 
with  the  green  baize-covered  table  to  which 
he  had  many  a  time  marched  up  sideways 
to  take  a  feruling.  Something  of  the  old 
awe  and  apprehension  which  Master  Den 
nett  used  to  inspire  crept  over  him.  There 
were  instants  when  Dutton  would  have  ab 
jectly  held  out  his  hand  if  he  had  been  told 
to  do  it.  He  had  been  invited  to  witness 
the  evolutions  of  the  graduating  class  in 
history  and  oratory,  and  the  moisture  gath 
ered  in  his  honest  blue  eyes  when  a  panic- 
stricken  urchin  faltered  forth  — 


80         FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD 

"  We  were  not  many,  we  who  stood 
Before  the  iron  sleet  that  day." 

Dutton  listened  to  it  all  with  unruffled 
gravity.  There  was  never  a  more  gentle 
hero,  or  one  with  a  slighter  sense  of  humor, 
than  the  hero  of  Chapultepec. 

Dutton's  lot  was  now  so  prosperous  a*  to 
exclude  any  disturbing  thoughts  concerning 
the  future.  The  idea  of  applying  for  a 
pension  never  entered  his  head  until  the 
subject  was  suggested  to  him  by  Postmaster 
Mugridge,  a  more  worldly  man,  an  office 
holder  himself,  with  a  carefully  peeled  eye 
on  Government  patronage.  Dutton  then 
reflected  that  perhaps  a  pension  would  be 
handy  in  his  old  age,  when  he  could  not  ex 
pect  to  work  steadily  at  his  trade,  even  if 
he  were  able  to  work  at  all.  He  looked 
about  for  somebody  to  manage  the  affair 
for  him.  Lawyer  Penhallow  undertook  the 
business  with  alacrity ;  but  the  alacrity  was 
all  on  his  side,  for  there  were  thousands  of 
yards  of  red  tape  to  be  unrolled  at  Washing 
ton  before  anything  in  that  sort  could  be 
done.  At  that  conservative  stage  of  our 


FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD        81 

national  progress,  it  was  not  possible  for  a 
man  to  obtain  a  pension  simply  because  he 
happened  to  know  the  brother  of  a  man  who 
knew  another  man  that  had  intended  to  go 
to  the  war,  and  did  n't.  Dutton's  claims, 
too,  were  seriously  complicated  by  the  fact 
that  he  had  lost  his  discharge  papers;  so 
the  matter  dragged,  and  was  still  dragging 
when  it  ceased  to  be  of  any  importance  to 
anybody. 

Whenever  James  Button  glanced  into 
the  future,  it  was  with  a  tranquil  mind.  He 
pictured  himself,  should  he  not  fall  out  of 
the  ranks,  a  white-haired,  possibly  a  bald- 
headed  old  boy,  sitting  of  summer  evenings 
on  the  door-step  of  his  shop,  and  telling 
stories  to  the  children  —  the  children  and 
grandchildren  of  his  present  associates  and 
friends.  He  would  naturally  have  laid  up 
something  by  that  time  ;  besides,  there  was 
his  pension.  Meanwhile,  though  he  moved 
in  a  humble  sphere,  was  not  his  lot  an  en 
viable  one?  There  were  long  years  of  pleas 
ant  existence  to  be  passed  through  before 
he  reached  the  period  of  old  age.  Of  course 


82  FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD 

that  would  have  its  ailments  and  discom 
forts,  but  its  compensations,  also.  It  seemed 
scarcely  predictable  that  the  years  to  come 
held  for  him  either  great  sorrows  or  great 
felicities :  he  would  never  marry,  and  though 
he  might  have  to  grieve  over  a  fallen  com 
rade  here  and  there,  his  heart  was  not  to  be 
wrung  by  the  possible  death  of  wife  or  child. 
With  the  tints  of  the  present  he  painted  his 
simple  future,  and  was  content. 

Sometimes  the  experiences  of  the  last  few 
years  took  on  the  semblance  of  a  haunting 
dream ;  those  long  marches  through  a  land 
rich  with  strange  foliage  and  fruits,  the  en 
chanted  Southern  nights,  the  life  in  camp, 
the  roar  of  battle,  and  that  one  bewildering 
day  on  the  heights  of  Chapultepec  —  it  all 
seemed  phantasmagoric.  But  there  was  his 
mutilation  to  assure  him  of  the  reality,  and 
there  on  Anchor  Street,  growing  grayer  and 
more  wrinkled  every  season,  stood  the  little 
building  where  he  had  enlisted.  To  be  sure, 
the  shield  was  gone  from  the  transom,  and 
the  spiders  had  stretched  their  reticulated 
barricades  across  the  entrance ;  but  when- 


FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD        83 

ever  Dutton  hobbled  by  the  place,  he  could 
almost  see  Sergeant  O'Neil  leaning  in  an 
insidious  attitude  against  the  door-sill,  and 
smoking  his  short  clay  pipe  as  of  old.  Yet 
as  time  elapsed,  this  figure  also  grew  indis 
tinct  and  elusive,  like  the  rest.  Possibly  — 
but  this  is  the  merest  conjecture,  and  has 
bearing  only  on  a  later  period  —  possibly 
it  may  have  sometimes  occurred  to  James 
Dutton,  in  a  vague  way,  that  after  all  there 
had  been  something  ironical  and  sinister  in 
his  good  fortune.  The  very  circumstance 
that  had  lifted  him  from  his  obscurity  had 
shut  him  out  from  further  usefulness  in  life ; 
his  one  success  had  defeated  him ;  he  was 
stranded,  and  could  do  no  more.  If  such  a 
reflection  ever  came  to  him,  no  expression 
of  it  found  a  way  to  his  lips. 

The  weeks  turned  themselves  into  months, 
and  the  months  into  years.  Perhaps  four 
years  had  passed  by  when  clouds  of  a  per 
ceptible  density  began  to  gather  on  James 
Dutton's  bright  horizon. 

The  wisest  of  poets  has  told  us  that  cus 
tom  dulls  the  edge  of  appetite.  One  gets 


84  FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD 

used  to  everything,  even  to  heroes.  James 
Dutton  was  beginning  to  lose  the  bloom  of 
his  novelty.  Indeed,  he  had  already  lost  it. 
The  process  had  been  so  gradual,  so  sub 
tile,  in  its  working,  that  the  final  result 
came  upon  him  like  something  that  had  hap 
pened  suddenly.  But  this  was  not  the  fact. 
He  might  have  seen  it  coming,  if  he  had 
watched.  One  by  one  his  customers  had 
drifted  away  from  him ;  his  shop  was  out 
of  the  beaten  track,  and  a  fashionable  boot 
and  shoe  establishment,  newly  sprung  up 
in  the  business  part  of  the  town,  had 
quietly  absorbed  his  patrons.  There  was 
no  conscious  unkindness  in  this  desertion. 
Thoughtless  neglect,  all  the  more  bitter  by 
contrast,  had  followed  thoughtless  admira 
tion.  Admiration  and  neglect  are  apt  to 
hunt  in  couples.  Nearly  all  the  customers 
left  on  Button's  hands  had  resolved  them 
selves  into  two  collateral  classes,  those  who 
delayed  and  those  who  forgot  to  pay.  That 
unreached  pension,  which  flitted  like  an 
ignis  fatuus  the  instant  one  got  anywhere 
near  it,  would  have  been  very  handy  to 


FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD        85 

have  just  then.  The  want  of  it  had  come 
long  before  old  age.  Dutton  was  only 
twenty-nine.  Yet  he  somehow  seemed  old. 
The  indoor  confinement  explained  his  pallor, 
but  not  the  deepening  lines  that  recently 
began  to  spread  themselves  fan-like  at  the 
corners  of  his  eyes. 

Callers  at  Nutter's  Lane  had  now  become 
rare  birds.  The  dwindling  of  his  visitors 
had  at  first  scarcely  attracted  his  notice; 
it  had  been  so  gradual,  like  the  rest.  But 
at  last  Dutton  found  himself  alone.  The 
old  solitude  of  his  youth  had  re-knitted  its 
shell  around  him.  Now  that  he  was  unsus- 
tained  by  the  likelihood  of  some  one  look 
ing  in  on  him,  the  evenings,  especially  the 
winter  evenings,  were  long  to  Dutton.  Ow 
ing  to  weak  eyes,  he  was  unable  to  read 
much,  and  then  he  was  not  naturally  a 
reader.  He  was  too  proud  or  too  shy  to 
seek  the  companionship  which  he  might 
have  found  at  Meeks's  drug-store.  More 
over,  the  society  there  was  not  of  a  kind 
that  pleased  him  ;  it  had  not  pleased  him  in 
the  old  days,  and  now  he  saw  how  narrow 


86  FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD 

and  poor  it  was,  having  had  a  glimpse  of 
the  broad  world.  The  moonlight  nights, 
when  he  could  sit  at  the  window,  and  look 
out  on  the  gleaming  river  and  the  objects 
on  the  further  shore,  were  bearable.  Some 
thing  seemed  always  to  be  going  on  in  the 
old  disused  burying-ground ;  he  was  posi 
tive  that  on  certain  nights  uncanny  figures 
flitted  from  dark  to  dark  through  a  broad 
intervening  belt  of  silvery  moonshine.  A 
busy  spot  after  all  these  years  !  But  when 
it  was  pitch-black  outside,  he  had  no  re 
sources.  His  work-bench  with  its  polished 
concave  leather  seat,  the  scanty  furniture, 
and  his  father's  picture  on  the  wall,  grew 
hateful  to  him.  At  an  hour  when  the  so 
cial  life  of  the  town  was  at  its  beginning, 
he  would  extinguish  his  melancholy  tallow- 
dip  and  go  to  bed,  lying  awake  until  long 
after  all  the  rest  of  the  world  slumbered. 
This  lying  awake  soon  became  a  habit.  The 
slightest  sound  broke  his  sleep  —  the  gnaw 
ing  of  a  mouse  behind  the  mop-board,  or 
a  change  in  the  wind ;  and  then  insomnia 
seized  upon  him.  He  lay  there  listening 


FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD        87 

to  the  summer  breeze  among  the  elms,  or 
to  the  autumn  winds  that,  sweeping  up 
from  the  sea,  teased  his  ear  with  muffled 
accents  of  wrecked  and  drowning  men. 

The  pay  for  the  few  jobs  which  came  to 
him  at  this  juncture  was  insufficient  to  sup 
ply  many  of  his  simple  wants.  It  was 
sometimes  a  choice  with  him  between  food 
and  fuel.  When  he  was  younger,  he  used 
to  get  all  the  chips  and  kindling  he  wanted 
from  Sherburn's  shipyard,  three  quarters  of 
a  mile  away.  But  handicapped  as  he  now 
was,  it  was  impossible  for  him  to  compass 
that  distance  over  the  slippery  sidewalk  or 
through  the  drifted  road-bed.  During  the 
particular  winter  here  in  question,  James 
Dutton  was  often  cold,  and  oftener  hungry 
—  and  nobody  suspected  it. 

A  word  in  the  ear  of  Parson  Wibird 
Hawkins,  or  the  Hon.  Jedd  Deane,  or  any 
of  the  scores  of  kind-hearted  townsfolk, 
would  have  changed  the  situation.  But  to 
make  known  his  distress,  to  appeal  for 
charity,  to  hold  out  his  hand  and  be  a 
pauper  —  that  was  not  in  him.  From  his 


88  FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD 

point  of  view,  if  he  could  have  done  that, 
he  would  not  have  been  the  man  to  rescue 
his  captain  on  the  fiery  plateau,  and  then 
go  back  through  that  hell  of  musketry  to 
get  the  mountain  howitzer.  He  was  se 
cretly  and  justly  proud  of  saving  his  cap 
tain's  life  and  of  bringing  off  that  "  cursed 
nice  little  cannon."  He  gloried  over  it 
many  a  time ,  to  himself,  and  often  of  late 
took  the  medal  of  honor  from  its  imitation- 
morocco  case,  and  read  the  inscription  by 
the  light  of  his  flickering  candle.  The  em 
bossed  silver  words  seemed  to  spread  a 
lambent  glow  over  all  the  squalid  little 
cabin  —  seemed  almost  to  set  it  on  fire ! 
More  than  once  some  irrepressible  small  boy, 
prowling  at  night  in  the  neighborhood  and 
drawn  like  a  moth  by  the  flame  of  Dutton's 
candle,  had  set  his  eye  to  a  crack  in  the 
door-panel  and  seen  the  shoemaker  sitting 
on  the  edge  of  his  bed  with  the  medal  in 
his  hand. 

Until  within  a  year  or  eighteen  months, 
Dutton  had  regularly  attended  the  Sunday 
morning  service  at  the  Old  Granite  Church. 


FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD        89 

One  service  was  all  he  could  manage,  for  it 
was  difficult  for  him  to  mount  the  steep 
staircase  leading  to  his  seat  in  the  gallery. 
That  his  attendance  slackened  and  finally 
ceased  altogether,  he  tried,  in  his  own  mind, 
to  attribute  to  this  difficulty,  and  not  to 
the  fact  that  his  best  suit  had  become 
so  threadbare  as  to  make  him  ashamed ; 
though  the  congregation  now  seldom  glanced 
up,  as  it  used  to  do,  at  the  organ-loft  where 
he  sat  separated  from  the  choir  by  a  low 
green  curtain.  Thus  he  had  on  his  hands 
the  whole  unemployed  day,  with  no  break 
in  its  monotony ;  and  it  often  seemed  in 
terminable.  The  Puritan  Sabbath  as  it 
then  existed  was  a  thing  not  to  be  trifled 
with.  All  temporal  affairs  were  sternly  set 
aside  ;  earth  came  to  a  standstill.  Dutton, 
however,  conceived  the  plan  of  writing 
down  in  a  little  blank-book  the  events  of 
his  life.  The  task  would  occupy  and  divert 
him,  and  be  no  flagrant  sin.  But  there 
had  been  no  events  in  his  life  until  the  one 
great  event ;  so  his  autobiography  resolved 
itself  into  a  single  line  on  the  first  page  — • 


90  FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD 

Sept.  13,  1847.     Had  my  leg  shot  off. 

What  else  was  there  to  record,  except  a 
transient  gleam  of  sunshine  immediately 
after  his  return  home,  and  his  present  help 
lessness  and  isolation  ? 

It  was  one  morning  at  the  close  of  a  par 
ticularly  bitter  December.  The  river-shore 
was  sheathed  in  thicker  ice  than  had  been 
known  for  twenty  years.  The  cold  snap, 
with  its  freaks  among  water-pipes  and  win 
dow-glass  and  straw-bedded  roots  in  front 
gardens,  was  a  thing  that  was  to  be  remem 
bered  and  commented  on  for  twenty  years 
to  come.  All  natural  phenomena  have  a 
curious  attraction  for  persons  who  live  in 
small  towns  and  villages.  The  weathercock 
on  the  spire  and  the  barometer  on  the  back 
piazza  are  studied  as  they  are  not  studied 
by  dwellers  in  cities.  A  habit  of  keen 
observation  of  trivial  matters  becomes 
second  nature  in  rural  places.  The  pro 
vincial  eye  grows  as  sharp  as  the  woods 
man's.  Thus  it  happened  that  somebody 
passing  casually  through  Nutter's  Lane 
that  morning  noticed  —  noticed  it  as  a 


FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD         91 

thing  of  course,  since  it  was  so  —  that  no 
smoke  was  coming  out  of  Dutton's  chim 
ney.  The  observer  presently  mentioned 
the  fact  at  the  Brick  Market  up-town,  and 
some  of  the  bystanders  began  wondering  if 
Dutton  had  overslept  himself,  or  if  he  were 
under  the  weather.  Nobody  recollected 
seeing  him  lately,  and  nobody  recollected 
not  seeing  him ;  a  person  so  seldom  in  the 
street  as  Dutton  is  not  soon  missed.  Dr. 
Meeks  concluded  that  he  would  look  in  at 
Nutter's  Lane  on  the  way  home  with  his 
marketing.  The  man  who  had  remarked 
the  absence  of  smoke  had  now  a  blurred 
impression  that  the  shutters  of  Dutton's 
shop-window  had  not  been  taken  down. 
It  looked  as  if  things  were  not  quite  right 
with  him.  Two  or  three  persons  were  go 
ing  in  Dr.  Meeks' s  direction,  so  they  accom 
panied  him,  and  turned  into  Nutter's  Lane 
with  the  doctor. 

The  shop  shutters  were  still  up,  and  no 
feather  of  smoke  was  curling  from  the  one 
chimney  of  Dutton's  little  house.  Dr. 
Meeks  rapped  smartly  on  the  door  without 


92         FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD 

bringing  a  response.  After  waiting  a  mo 
ment  he  knocked  again,  somewhat  more 
heavily,  but  with  like  ill  success.  Then  he 
tried  the  latch.  The  door  was  bolted. 

"  I  think  the  lad  must  be  sick,"  said  Dr. 
Meeks,  glancing  hurriedly  over  his  shoulder 
at  his  companions.  "  What  shall  we  do  ?  " 

"  I  guess  we  'd  better  see  if  he  is,"  said 
a  man  named  Philbrick.  "  Let  me  come 
there,"  and  without  further  words  Phil- 
brick  pressed  his  full  weight  against  the 
pine-wood  panels.  The  rusty  fastening 
gave  way,  and  the  door  flew  open.  Cold 
as  it  was  without,  a  colder  breath  seemed 
to  issue  from  the  interior.  The  door  opened 
directly  into  the  main  apartment,  which  was 
Dutton's  shop  and  sleeping-place  in  one.  It 
was  a  lovely  morning,  and  the  sunshine,  as 
if  it  had  caught  a  glitter  from  the  floating 
points  of  ice  on  the  river,  poured  in  through 
a  rear  window  and  flooded  the  room  with 
gold.  James  Dutton  was  lying  on  his  pal 
let  in  the  further  corner.  He  was  dead. 
He  must  have  been  dead  several  hours, 
perhaps  two  or  three  days.  The  medal 


FOR  BRAVERY  ON  THE  FIELD          93 

lay  on  his  breast,  from  which  his  right 
hand  had  evidently  slipped.  The  down- 
like  frost  on  the  medal  was  so  thick  as 
to  make  it  impossible  to  distinguish  the 
words  — 

"FOR  B«A  tRY  ON  THE  FlELD   OF 

BATTLE." 


I'HE  CHEVALIER  DE  RESSEGUIER 


I  AM  unable  to  explain  the  impulse  that 
prompted  me  to  purchase  it.  I  had  no  use 
for  a  skull  —  excepting,  of  course,  the  one 
I  am  temporarily  occupying.  There  have 
been  moments,  indeed,  when  even  that  has 
seemed  to  me  an  incumbrance.  Neverthe 
less,  I  bought  another. 

It  was  one  of  three  specimens  which  dec 
orated  the  window  of  a  queer  bookshop  that 
I  was  in  the  habit  of  passing  in  my  daily 
walks  between  the  railway  station  and  the 
office  of  the  "Esthetic  Review."  I  was 
then  living  out  of  town.  I  call  it  a  queer 
bookshop,  for  it  was  just  that.  It  dealt  in 
none  but  works  on  phrenology,  toxicology, 
evolution,  mesmerism,  spiritualism,  and 
kindred  occult  sciences.  Against  the  door* 


THE  CHEVALIER  DE  RESSEQUIER      95 

jambs,  and  on  some  shelves  outside,  were 
piled  small  packages  of  quaintly  bound  vol 
umes,  each  set  tied  up  with  a  piece  of  frayed 
twine,  and  bearing  a  tag  on  which  was  writ 
ten  the  title  of  the  work.  These  thin,  dingy 
octavos  and  twelvemos,  looking  as  if  they 
might  have  come  out  of  some  mediaeval 
library,  were  chiefly  treatises  of  a  psychical 
and  social  nature,  and  were  no  doubt  dar 
ingly  speculative.  The  patrons  of  the  estab 
lishment  shared  its  eccentricity.  Now  and 
then  I  caught  sight  of  a  customer  either 
entering  or  leaving  the  shop.  Sometimes 
it  was  a  half-shabby  middle-aged  man,  who 
seemed  a  cross  between  a  low  comedian 
and  a  village  undertaker ;  sometimes  it  was 
a  German  or  a  Pole,  cadaverous,  heavy- 
bearded,  with  a  restlessness  about  the  eyes 
—  a  fellow  that  might  be  suspected  of  carry 
ing  dynamite  pellets  in  his  waistcoat  pocket ; 
and  sometimes  it  was  an  elderly  female, 
severe  of  aspect,  with  short  hair  in  dry 
autumnal  curls,  evidently  a  person  with  ad 
vanced  views  on  Man,  and  so  flat  in  figure, 
so  wholly  denuded  of  graceful  feminine 


9G      THE  CHEVALIER  DE  RESSEGUIER 

curves,  as  to  make  it  difficult  for  one  to 
determine,  when  she  lingered  an  instant  in 
the  doorway,  whether  she  was  going  in  or 
coming  out. 

What  first  attracted  my  attention  to  the 
shop-window  was  a  plaster  bust  of  the 
Young  Augustus,  for  which  a  copy  of 
Malthus  on  "  The  Principle  of  Population  " 
served  as  pedestal.  The  cranium  had  been 
neatly  marked  out  into  irregular,  variously 
colored  sections,  like  a  map  of  the  United 
States.  In  each  section  was  a  Roman  nu 
meral,  probably  having  its  duplicate  with 
an  attendant  explanation  in  the  phrenologi 
cal  chart  which  lay  in  front  of  the  bust. 
That  first  caught  my  eye;  but  the  object 
which  touched  my  real  interest,  and  held  it, 
was  what  I  took  to  be  a  skillful  imitation  of 
the  human  skull,  carved  in  rich  old  ivory. 
It  struck  me  as  a  consummate  little  piece  of 
sculpture,  and  I  admired  it  greatly.  After 
closer  and  repeated  scrutiny,  however,  I 
discovered  that  it  was  not  a  reproduction, 
but  the  genuine  article ;  yet  I  could  never 
wholly  divest  myself  of  its  first  impression 


THE  CHEVALIER  DE  RESSEGUIER     97 

as  a  work  of  art.  A  work  of  art,  indeed ! 
It  was  one  of  a  kind  on  which  patient  Na 
ture  has  lavished  some  of  her  most  exquisite 
handicraft.  What  inanimate  object  on 
earth  so  appeals  to  the  imagination  as  a 
skull,  the  deserted  "dome  of  thought,  the 
palace  of  the  soul,"  as  Byron  called  it? 
Reverently  regarded,  there  is  nothing  de 
pressing  or  repellent  in  it.  That  is  a  false 
and  morbid  sentimentalism  which  sees  in 
such  relics  anything  but  a  solemn  and 
beautiful  mystery. 

There  were,  as  I  have  said,  two  other 
specimens  in  the  window,  but  the  one  signal 
ized  was  incomparably  the  finest.  I  seldom 
passed  near  the  shop  without  halting  a  mo 
ment  to  contemplate  the  wide,  placid  brows, 
in  which  there  was  a  beauty  of  even  a  finer 
kind  than  that  in  the  face  of  the  Young 
Augustus,  in  spite  of  the  latter  having  all 
the  advantage  of  completed  features.  The 
skull  was  apparently  very  old  —  say  a  hun 
dred  years  or  so,  if  that  is  old  for  a  skull ; 
and  had  clearly  belonged  to  a  man  past  the 
prime  of  life  at  the  instant  of  his  quitting 


98      THE  CHEVALIER  DE  RE8SEGUIER 

it.  It  was  a  curious  reflection  that  while 
time  had  ceased  for  the  man  himself,  the 
inexorable  years  were  surely,  though  slowly 
and  imperceptibly,  working  their  will  on 
what  was  once  so  intimate  a  part  of  him, 
the  cast-off  shell  of  his  mind ! 

Passing  the  shop  day  after  day  through 
those  summer  months,  I  finally  became,  if 
the  phrase  is  permissible,  on  familiar  terms 
with  the  skull.  As  I  approached  it  morn 
ing  and  evening,  on  my  passage  to  and  fro, 
it  grew  to  seem  to  me  like  the  face  of  a 
friend  in  the  crowd  —  a  face  that  I  should 
have  missed  if  it  had  been  absent.  Once 
or  twice  as  the  declining  sun  chanced  mo 
mentarily  to  light  up  the  polished  marble 
brows,  I  almost  fancied  that  I  detected  a 
gleam  of  recognition  on  the  part  of  the 
mask.  It  had  such  an  air  of  shrewdness  as 
it  looked  out  on  the  busy  life  of  the  street  I 
"What,"  I  said  to  myself  one  evening  — 
"  what  if  by  any  possibility  it  has  some  dim 
perception  of  the  fret  and  fever  of  it  all  — 
if  some  little  flickering  spark  of  conscious 
ness  still  lingers ! " 


THE  CHEVALIER  DE  RESSEGU1ER     99 

The  idea,  fanciful  and  illogical  as  it  was, 
suggested  itself  to  my  mind  from  time  to 
time,  and  one  afternoon  the  pathos  of  it 
thrilled  me  strangely.  I  had  a  swift  desire 
to  take  possession  of  the  skull,  and  give  it 
decent  sepulture  somewhere,  though  that 
would  have  been  no  kindly  service  if  it 
were  a  sentient  thing.  At  any  rate,  I  re 
solved  to  shelter  it  from  further  publicity, 
and  a  moment  afterward  I  found  myself 
inside  the  old  bookshop,  and  in  close  com 
mercial  relations  with  the  proprietor,  a 
moist-eyed  but  otherwise  desiccated  little 
man,  whose  pince-nez,  attached  by  an  elastic 
cord  and  set  at  an  acute  angle  on  his  nose, 
was  continually  dropping  into  his  shirt- 
bosom.  There  was  something  in  the  soft 
ness  of  his  voice  and  the  meekness  of  his 
manner  out  of  all  keeping  with  the  revolu 
tionary  and  explosive  literature  amid  which 
he  passed  his  existence. 

"  No,"  he  said  gently,  in  reply  to  a  ques 
tion  I  had  put  to  him ;  "  I  cannot  say  whose 
it  was.  Of  course,"  he  added,  with  a  feeble 
smile  that  had  something  of  the  pensiveness 


100     THE  CHEVALIER  DE  RESSEGUIER 

of  a  sigh,  "  it  must  have  belonged  to  some 
one  in  particular ;  such  things  are  not  gen 
erally  in  common." 

"I  quite  understand  that,"  I  returned. 
"  I  merely  thought  it  might  possibly  have 
some  sort  of  pedigree.  Have  you  any  idea 
how  old  it  is  ?  " 

"  There,  too,  I  am  in  the  dark,"  he  re 
plied  deprecatingly.  "  It  stood  in  the  shop- 
window  when  I  came  here  as  a  boy,  some 
what  more  than  fifty  years  ago.  I  distinctly 
remember  upsetting  it  the  very  first  morn 
ing  I  swept  out  the  store.  Where  old  Mr. 
Waldron  got  it  —  I  succeeded  to  the  busi 
ness  in  1859 ;  will  you  let  me  give  you  one 
of  my  cards  ?  —  and  how  long  he  had  had  it 
in  stock,  I  am  unable  to  state.  It  is  in  per 
fect  preservation,  you  will  observe,  and  a 
gentleman  wanting  anything  in  this  line^ 
either  for  a  collection  or  as  a  single  speci 
men,  could  scarcely  do  better." 

As  the  ancient  bookseller  spoke,  he  held 
out  the  skull  on  his  palm  at  arm's  length, 
and  regarded  it  critically,  giving  a  little 
purring  hum  of  admiration  meanwhile.  I 


THE  CHEVALIER  DE  RESSEGUIER     101 

straightway  thought  of  the  grave-digger  in 
the  churchyard  at  Elsinore,  and  inwardly 
repeated  Hamlet's  comment:  "Hath  this 
fellow  no  feeling  of  his  business,  that  he 
sings  at  grave-making  ?  " 

I  was  without  definite  views  concerning 
the  current  prices  of  the  merchandise  I  was 
about  to  purchase,  but  supposed  that  they 
ran  rather  high.  I  was  astonished  by  the 
smallness  of  the  sum  named  for  the  skull 
—  a  sum  at  which  I  should  hesitate  to  part 
with  my  own,  unless  it  were  in  some  acute 
crisis  of  neuralgic  headache. 

The  transaction  concluded,  I  had  an 
instant's  embarrassment.  "  Could  n't  you 
wrap  this  in  something  ?  "  I  said. 

"  Certainly,  to  be  sure  !  "  exclaimed  the 
little  man,  fishing  up  his  eye-glasses  for 
the  twentieth  time  from  the  deep  sea  of 
his  shirt-bosom.  "  Perhaps  you  would  like 
it  sent?  If  you  will  give  me  your  ad 
dress  "  — 

"  No,  thanks.  I  live  out  of  town.  I  will 
take  it  with  me." 

"  Ah,  quite  so,"  he  said,  and,  retiring  to 


102     THE  CHEVALIER  DE  RESSEGUIER 

an  inner  room,  presently  returned  with  the 
skull  neatly  wrapped  in  a  sheet  or  two  of 
pink  tissue-paper. 

I  put  it  under  my  arm,  and  passed  into 
the  street,  trying  to  throw  into  my  counte 
nance  the  expression  of  a  man  who  is  carry 
ing  home  a  melon.  I  succeeded  so  far  in 
this  duplicity  as  to  impose  on  my  wife,  who, 
meeting  me  on  the  piazza  of  our  little  coun 
try-house,  gayly  snatched  the  package  from 
my  hand,  and  remarked :  — 

"  We  will  have  it  for  dinner,  dear  I  " 

We  both  were  smiling  as  we  entered  the 
house.  In  the  mean  while  she  was  peeling 
off  the  layers  of  tissue-paper. 

"  But  it  is  n't  a  melon  !  "  cried  my  wife, 
nastily  laying  the  package  on  the  hall  table. 

"No,  dear,"  I  said ;  "  it 's  a  skull." 

"  A  skull  ?  How  dreadful !  Where  did 
you  get  it  ?  Whose  skull  ?  " 

"It  is  mine  —  so  far  as  such  property 
can  be  —  for  I  bought  it.  It  is  more  dis 
tinctly  mine  than  the  one  I  have,  which  I 
did  n't  buy  and  pay  for,  but  which  was 
thrown  upon  my  hands,  so  to  speak,  without 


THE  CHEVALIER  DE  RESSEGUIER     103 

any  regard  to  my  personal  wishes  in  the 
matter.  This  one  I  wanted." 

"  But,  my  dear,  what  possessed  you  ?  It 
is  perfectly  horrid  !  " 

"  It  is  perfectly  beautiful,  my  love,  and 
it  has  the  highest  moral  significance.  It  is 
probable  that  the  original  wearer  of  it  con 
veyed  no  such  deep  lesson  to  his  contempo 
raries  as  this  surviving  framework  of  him 
may  have  for  us.  The  wise  Athenians  al 
ways  had  a  skull  at  their  banquets,  to  re 
mind  them  of  the  transitoriness  and  vanity 
of  life.  So,  after  all,  we  can  have  it  for 
dinner,  dear.  Gazing  upon  this  symbol  of 
impermanence,  you  will  no  longer  envy  Mrs. 
Midas  her  coupe,  and  I  shall  feel  that  old 
Midas's  balance  at  the  bank  is  not  worth 
having,  and  that  his  ponderous  new  granite 
chateau,  which  completely  cuts  off  our  view 
of  the  river,  is  a  thing  of  shifting  sand.  As 
a  literary  critic  too  much  inclined,  perhaps, 
to  be  severe  on  the  shortcomings  of  fellow- 
creatures  whose  gifts  are  superior  to  mine, 
I  need  just  such  a  memento  mori  to  restrain 
my  natural  intolerance." 


104     THE  CHEVALIER  DE  RES8EGUIER 

"  How  absurd  !  What  do  you  mean  to 
do  with  it  ?  " 

"  I  intend  to  put  it  on  the  faience  bracket 
over  the  end  window  in  the  library." 

"Is  it  entirely  appropriate  as  an  orna 
ment,  dear  ?  Is  n't  it  a  trifle  —  ghostly  ?  " 

"  It  is  decidedly  appropriate.  What  are 
books  themselves  but  the  lingering  shades 
of  dead  and  gone  historians,  story-tellers, 
and  poets  ?  Every  library  is  full  of  ghosts, 
the  air  is  thick  with  them." 

"  I  am  sure  Jane  will  give  us  warning 
the  moment  she  lays  eyes  on  it." 

"  Then  Jane  can  retire  with  her  own  silly 
head-piece." 

"  It  will  certainly  terrify  little  Alfred." 

"  If  it  prevents  little  Alfred  from  playing 
in  the  library  during  my  absence,  and 
breaking  the  amber  mouth-pieces  off  my 
best  pipes,  I  shall  not  complain.  But,  seri 
ously,  I  set  a  value  on  this  ancient  relic  — 
a  value  which  I  cannot  easily  make  clear 
even  to  myself.  In  speaking  of  the  mat 
ter  I  have  drifted  into  a  lighter  vein  than 
I  intended.  The  thing  will  not  be  out  of 


THE   CHEVALIER  DE  BESSEGUIER     105 

place  among  the  books  and  bric-a-brac  in 
the  library,  where  no  one  spends  much  time, 
excepting  myself ;  so,  like  a  good  girl,  say 
no  more  about  it." 

The  question  thus  pleasantly  settled  it 
self.  I  had  scarcely  installed  my  singular 
acquisition  on  the  bracket  when  I  was  called 
to  dinner.  I  paused  a  moment  or  two  with 
my  hand  on  the  knob  of  the  library  door  to 
take  in  the  general  effect  from  that  point  of 
view.  The  skull,  which  in  widely  different 
surroundings  had  become  a  familiar  object 
to  me,  adapted  itself  admirably  to  its  new 
milieu.  There  was  nothing  incongruous  or 
recent  in  its  aspect;  it  seemed  always  to 
have  stood  just  there,  though  the  bracket 
had  for  years  been  occupied  by  a  slender 
Venetian  vase,  a  bit  of  Salviati's  fragile 
workmanship,  which  only  a  few  days  previ 
ously  had  been  blown  from  its  stand  by  a 
draft  caused  by  the  sudden  opening  of  the 
door. 

"  Yes,"  I  said,  "  it  will  do  very  well. 
There  's  nothing  like  it  to  give  a  tone  to  a 
library." 


n 

"  WILL  you  take  your  coffee  here,  or 
have  it  in  the  library  ? "  asked  my  wife, 
while  Jane  was  removing  the  remains  of 
the  dessert. 

"  In  the  library,"  I  said ;  "  and  as  soon 
as  Jane  can  fetch  it.  I  must  finish  that 
review  to-night." 

When  I  bought  the  small  house,  half 
villa,  half  chalet,  called  Redroof,  I  added  a 
two-story  extension  containing  a  spacious 
study  on  the  ground-floor  and  a  bedroom 
over  it.  As  I  frequently  sat  up  late,  and 
as  Redroof  was  in  a  rather  isolated  situ 
ation,  I  liked  to  be  within  speaking-distance 
of  my  wife.  By  locking  the  doors  of  the 
upper  and  lower  vestibules,  which  were  con 
nected  by  a  staircase,  we  wholly  separated 
ourselves  from  the  main  building.  The 
library  was  a  long  low-studded  apartment 
with  three  windows  on  each  side,  and  at  the 


THE  CHEVALIER  DE  RESSEGUIER    107 

end  opposite  the  door  a  wide-mullioned  lat 
tice,  with  lead-set  panes,  overlooking  a 
stretch  of  lonely  meadows.  The  quiet  and 
seclusion  of  the  room  made  it  an  ideal  spot 
for  literary  undertakings,  and  here  it  was 
that  I  did  the  greater  part  of  my  work. 

Now  I  had  an  important  piece  of  work 
on  hand  this  night,  and  after  I  had  drunk 
my  coffee  I  began  turning  over  the  leaves 
of  a  certain  half-completed  manuscript, 
with  the  despairing  consciousness  that  I 
was  not  in  a  mood  to  go  on  with  it.  The 
article  in  question  was  a  study  of  political 
intrigue  during  the  reigns  of  Louis  XV. 
and  Louis  XVI.  The  subject  had  fasci 
nated  me  ;  for  a  week  I  had  been  unable  to 
think  of  anything  else,  and  the  first  part  of 
the  article  had  almost  written  itself.  But 
now  I  found  it  impossible  to  pick  up  the 
threads  of  my  essay.  My  mind  refused 
concentration  on  any  single  point.  A  hun 
dred  things  I  wanted  to  say  rushed  upon 
me  simultaneously,  and  so  jostled  and  ob 
scured  one  another  as  to  create  nothing  but 
confusion.  This  congestion  of  ideas  is  quite 


108     THE  CHEVALIER  DE  RESSEGUIER 

as  perplexing  as  their  total  absence,  and 
the  result  is  the  same.  I  threw  down  my 
pen  in  disgust,  and,  placing  one  elbow  on 
the  desk,  rested  my  cheek  on  my  palm.  I 
had  remained  in  that  attitude  for  perhaps 
three  minutes  when  I  heard  a  voice  —  a 
low  but  distinct  voice  —  saying,  — 

"  I  beg  monsieur's  pardon,  but  if  I  inter 
rupt  him  "  — 

I  instantly  wheeled  round  in  my  chair, 
expecting  to  see  some  one  standing  on  the 
Bokhara  rug  behind  me,  though  in  the  very 
act  of  turning  I  reflected  how  nearly  im 
possible  it  was  that  any  visitor  could  have 
got  into  the  library  at  that  time  of  night. 
There  was  nobody  visible.  I  glanced 
toward  the  door  leading  into  the  vestibule. 
It  was  unlikely  that  that  door  could  have 
been  opened  and  closed  without  my  ob 
serving  it. 

"  I  beg  monsieur's  pardon,"  repeated  the 
voice,  "  but  I  am  here  —  on  the  bracket." 

"  Oh,"  I  said  to  myself,  "  I  am  careering 
r«dund  on  the  wildest  of  nightmares  —  one 
that  has  never  before  had  a  saddle  on  her. 


THE  CHEVALIER  DE  RESSEGUIER  109 
Clearly  this  is  the  result  of  over-work." 
My  next  impression  was  that  I  was  being 
made  the  victim  of  some  ingenious  practi 
cal  joke.  But  no  ;  the  voice  had  incontes- 
tably  issued  from  the  little  shelf  above  the 
window,  and  though  the  effect  might  have 
been  accomplished  by  some  acoustic  con 
trivance,  there  was  no  one  in  the  house  or 
in  the  neighborhood  capable  of  conceiving 
it.  Since  the  thing  was  for  the  moment  in 
explicable,  I  decided  to  accept  it  on  its  own 
terms.  Recovering  my  composure,  and  fix 
ing  my  eyes  steadily  in  the  direction  of  the 
bracket,  I  said :  — 

"  Are  you  the  person  who  just  addressed 
me?" 

"  I  am  not  a  person,  monsieur,"  replied 
the  voice  slowly,  as  if  with  difficulty  at 
first,  and  with  an  unmistakable  French  ac 
cent  ;  "  I  am  merely  a  conscience,  an  intelli 
gence  imprisoned  in  this  sphere.  Formerly 
I  was  a  person  —  a  person  of  some  slight 
distinction,  if  I  may  be  permitted  so  much 
egotism.  Possibly  monsieur  has  heard  of 
me  — I  am  the  Chevalier  de  Kesseguier." 


110     THE   CHEVALIER  DE  RESSEGUIER 

Mechanically  I  threw  a  sheet  of  blotting- 
paper  over  the  last  page  of  my  manuscript. 
Not  five  minutes  previously  I  had  written 
the  following  sentence  —  the  ink  was  still 
fresh  on  the  words  :  Among  the  other  inti 
mates  of  Madame  du  Barry  at  this  pe 
riod  was  an  adventurer  from  Toulouse,  a 
pseudo  man-of -letters,  a  sort  of  prowling 
epigram  —  one  Chevalier  DE  RESSEGUIER  ! 

I  had  never  been  a  believer  in  spiritual 
istic  manifestations,  perhaps  for  the  simple 
reason  that  I  had  never  been  fortunate 
enough  to  witness  any.  Hitherto  all  phe 
nomena  had  sedulously  avoided  me;  but 
here  was  a  mystery  that  demanded  con 
sideration  —  something  that  was  not  to  be 
explained  away  on  the  theory  that  my 
senses  had  deceived  me,  something  that  the 
Society  for  Psychical  Research  would  have 
been  glad  to  get  hold  of.  I  found  myself 
for  once  face  to  face  with  the  Unusual, 
and  I  did  not  mean  to  allow  it  to  daunt 
me.  What  is  seemingly  supernatural,  is  not 
always  to  be  taken  too  seriously.  The  as 
trology  of  one  age  becomes  the  astronomy 


THE  CHEVALIER  DE  RE88EGUIER    111 

of  the  next ;  the  magician  disappears  in  the 
scientist.  Perhaps  it  was  an  immense  cu 
riosity  rather  than  any  spirit  of  scientific 
investigation  that  gave  steadiness  to  my 
nerves ;  for  I  was  now  as  cool  and  collected 
as  if  a  neighbor  had  dropped  in  to  spend 
an  hour  with  me.  I  placed  the  German 
student-lamp  further  back  on  the  desk, 
crossed  my  legs,  and  settled  myself  com 
fortably  in  the  chair,  like  a  person  disposed 
to  be  sociable. 

"  Did  I  understand  you  to  say,"  I  asked 
with  deliberation,  "that  you  were  the 
Chevalier  de  Resseguier  ?  " 

"  Yes,  monsieur." 

"  The  Chevalier  de  Resseguier  whom 
Madame  de  Pompadour  once  sent  to  the 
Bastille  for  writing  a  certain  vivacious 
quatrain  ?  " 

"  Ah,  monsieur  knows  mel  I  was  certain 
of  it !  " 

"  The  Chevalier  de  Resseguier  who  flut 
tered  round  the  Du  Barry  at  the  time  of 
her  debut,  and  later  on  figures  in  one  or 
two  chapters  of  her  lively  '  Meinoires  '  ?  " 


112     THE  CHEVALIER  DE  RESSEGUIElt 

"  What !  did  the  fair  Jeannette  give  her 
*  Memoires '  to  the  world,  and  do  I  figure 
in  them  ?  Well,  well !  She  had  many 
talents,  la  belle  Du  Barry ;  she  was  of  a 
cleverness!  but  I  never  suspected  her  of 
being  a  bas  bleu.  And  so  she  wrote  her 
4  Memoires  ' !  " 

"  Were  you  not  aware  of  it  ?  " 

"  Alas,  monsieur,  I  know  of  nothing  that 
has  happened  since  that  fatal  July  morning 
in  '93  when  M.  Sanson — it  was  on  the 
Place  Louis  Quinze  —  chut!  and  all  was 
over." 

"  You  mean  you  were  "  — 

"  Guillotined  ?  Certainement  I  —  thanks 
to  M.  Fouquier-Tinville.  At  that  epoch 
everybody  of  any  distinction  passed  through 
the  hands  of  the  executeur  des  hautes 
oeuvres  —  a  polite  euphuism,  monsieur. 
They  were  regenerating  society  in  France 
by  cutting  off  the  only  heads  that  had 
any  brains  in  them.  Ah,  monsieur,  though 
some  few  of  us  may  not  have  known  how 
to  live,  nearly  all  of  us  knew  how  to  die  I  " 

Though  this  De  Resseguier  had  been  in 


THE  CHEVALIER  DE  REB8EGUIER     113 

his  time  a  rascal  of  the  first  water  —  I  had 
it  down  in  black  and  white  in  my  historical 
memoranda  —  there  certainly  was  about 
him  something  of  that  chivalric  dash,  that 
ornateness  of  manner,  that  delightful  in 
souciance  which  we  associate  with  the 
XVIIIe  siecle.  This  air  of  high-breeding 
was  no  doubt  specious,  a  thing  picked  up 
at  the  gateway  of  that  gilded  society  which 
his  birth  and  condition  prevented  him  from 
entering.  The  De  Choiseuls,  the  De  Mau- 
peous,  the  D'Aiguillons — they  were  not 
for  him.  But  he  had  breathed  in  a  rich 
literary  atmosphere,  perhaps  had  spoken 
with  Beaumarchais,  or  Rousseau,  or  Mar- 
montel,  or  Diderot  —  at  least  he  had  seen 
them.  He  had  known  his  Paris  well,  that 
Paris  which  had  a  mot  and  a  laugh  on  its 
lip  until  the  glittering  knife  fell.  He  had 
witnessed  the  assembling  of  the  Etats  Ge- 
neraux  ;  had  listened  to  Camille  Desmoulins 
haranguing  the  populace  from  his  green 
table  in  the  garden  of  the  Palais-Royal; 
had  gazed  upon  Citizen  Marat  lying  in 
state  at  the  Pantheon;  and  had  watched 


114     THE  CHEVALIER  DE  RESSEGUIER 

poor  Louis  Capet  climb  the  scaffold  stairs. 
Was  he  not  "  a  mine  of  memories,"  this 
Chevalier  de  Resseguier  ?  If  the  chevalier 
had  had  a  grain  of  honesty  in  him,  I  might 
have  secured  fresh  and  precious  material 
for  my  essay  —  some  unedited  fact,  some 
hitherto  unused  tint  of  local  color;  but  I 
had  his  measure,  and  he  was  not  to  be 
trusted.  So  I  attempted  nothing  of  the 
sort,  though  the  opportunity  of  interro 
gating  him  on  certain  points  was  alluring. 

The  silence  which  followed  the  chevalier's 
last  remark  was  broken  by  myself. 

"  Chevalier,"  I  said,  "  it  is  with  great 
hesitation  that  I  broach  so  delicate  a  matter, 
but  your  mention  of  M.  Sanson  recalls  to 
my  mind  the  controversy  that  raged  among 
physiologists,  at  the  close  of  the  Reign  of 
Terror,  on  a  question  similar  to  the  one 
which  is  at  this  moment  occupying  our  elec 
tricians.  It  was  held  by  the  eminent  Dr. 
Sue  that  decapitation  involved  prolonged 
and  exquisite  suffering,  while  the  equally 
eminent  Dr.  Sedillot  contended  that  pain 
was  simply  impossible,  an  opinion  which 


THE  CHEVALIER   DE  RESSEGUIER     115 

was  sustained  by  the  learned  Gastellier. 
Will  you,  Chevalier,  for  the  sake  of  sci 
ence,  pardon  me  if  I  ask  you  —  was  it  quite 
painless  ?  " 

"  M.  le  docteur  Sedillot  was  correct, 
monsieur.  Imagine  a  sensation  a  thousand 
times  swifter  than  the  swiftest  thought,  and 
monsieur  has  it." 

"  What  followed  then  ?  " 

"  Darkness  and  sleep." 

"  For  how  long,  Chevalier  ?  " 

"  An  hour  —  a  month  —  a  year  —  what 
know  I?" 

"  And  then  "  — 

"  A  glimmering  light,  consciousness,  the 
past  a  vivid  reality,  the  present  almost  a 
blur.  Voila  tout  1 " 

"  In  effect,  Chevalier,  you  had  left  the 
world  behind  you,  taking  with  you  nothing 
but  your  personal  memories  —  a  light  lug 
gage,  after  all!  As  you  are  unfamiliar 
with  everything  that  has  occurred  since  that 
July  morning,  possibly  it  may  interest  you 
to  learn  that  on  December  7,  1793  —  five 
months  subsequent  to  your  own  departure 


116     TEE   CHEVALIER  DE  RESSEGUIER 

—  the  Comtesse  du  Barry  was  summoned 
before  the  Tribunal  Revolutionnaire,  and 
the  next  day  "  — 

"  She,  too  —  la  pauvre  petite !  I  can 
fancy  her  not  liking  that  at  all." 

"  Indeed,  Chevalier,  the  countess  showed 
but  faltering  fortitude  on  this  occasion.  It 
is  reported  that  she  cried,  '  Grace,  monsieur 
le  bourreau ;  encore  un  moment ! '  It  was 
not  for  such  as  she  to  mount  the  scaffold 
with  the  tread  of  a  Charlotte  Corday." 

"Ma  foil  nonl  She  was  a  frank  coquine, 
when  truth  is  said.  But  who  is  all  bad? 
She  was  not  treacherous  like  Felicite  de 
Nesle,  nor  vindictive  like  the  Duchesse  de 
Chateauroux.  There  was  not  a  spark  of 
malice  in  her,  monsieur.  When  it  was  easy 
for  her  to  do  so,  the  Du  Barry  never  em 
ployed  against  her  enemies  —  and  she  had 
many  —  those  lettres  de  cachet  which  used 
to  fly  in  flocks,  like  blackbirds,  from  the 
hand  of  Madame  de  Pompadour." 

"  It  is  creditable  to  your  heart,  Chevalier 

—  or,  rather,  to  your  head  —  that  you  have 
a  kindly  word  for  Madame  du  Barry." 


THE  CHEVALIER  DE  RESSEGUIER     117 

"  To  be  sure  she  thrust  her  adorable  arm 
up  to  the  elbow  in  the  treasure-chest  of 
Louis  le  bien-aime,  but  then  she  was  gen 
erous.  She  patronized  art  —  and  sometimes 
literature.  The  painter  and  the  sculptor 
did  not  go  unpaid  —  die  donnait  a  deux 
mains.  Possibly  monsieur  has  seen  Pajou's 
bust  of  her?  Quel  chef-d'oeuvre!  And 
that  portrait  by  Drouais  —  lejoli  museauf" 

"  I  have  seen  the  bust,"  I  replied,  glad 
to  escape  into  the  rarefied  atmosphere  of 
the  arts ;  "  it  is  in  the  Louvre  at  present, 
and,  as  you  observe,  a  masterpiece.  The 
Drouais  portrait  has  not  fallen  in  my  way. 
There 's  an  engraving  of  it,  I  believe,  in  one 
of  Paul  de  Saint- Victor's  interesting  vol 
umes.  Ah,  yes,  I  forgot ;  he  is  not  of  your 
world.  But  how  is  it,  Chevalier,  that  with 
your  remarkable  conversational  power  "  — 

"  Monsieur  is  too  flattering." 

"  How  is  it  that  you  have  not  informed 
yourself  concerning  the  progress  of  human 
events,  and  especially  of  the  political,  liter 
ary,  and  social  changes  that  have  taken 
place  in  France?  Surely  you  have  had 


118     THE  CHEVALIER  DE  RESSEGUIER 

opportunities  rarely  offered,  I  imagine,  to 
one  in  your  position.  Now,  at  the  bookshop 
where  I  —  where  I  made  your  acquaintance, 
you  might  have  interrogated  many  intelli 
gent  persons." 

"  Ah,  that  miserable  boutique  I  and  that 
superannuated  vender  of  revolutionary  pam 
phlets  —  an  imbecile  of  imbeciles,  monsieur  I 
How  could  I  have  talked  with  him  and  his 
fellow  cretins,  even  if  it  had  been  possible  J 
But  it  was  not  possible.  Monsieur  is  the 
only  person  to  whom  I  have  ever  been  able 
to  communicate  myself.  A  barrier  of  dense 
materialism  has  until  now  excluded  me 
from  such  intercourse  as  monsieur  suggests. 
I  make  my  compliments  to  monsieur ;  he  is 
tout  a  fait  spirituel !  " 

"  May  I  inquire,  Chevalier,"  I  said,  after 
a  moment  of  meditation,  "  if  the  mind,  the 
vital  spark,  of  all  persons  who  pass  through 
a  certain  inevitable  experience  takes  final 
lodgment  in  the  cranium  ?  I  begin  then  to 
comprehend  why  that  part  of  the  anatomy 
of  man  has  been  rendered  almost  indestruc 
tible." 


THE  CHEVALIER  DE  RESSEGUIER    119 

"  I  am  grieved  that  I  cannot  dispel  the 
darkness  enveloping  monsieur's  problem. 
Perhaps  this  disposition  of  the  vital  spark, 
as  monsieur  calls  it,  occurs  only  in  the  case 
of  those  persons  who  have  made  their  exit 
under  peculiar  circumstances.  I  cannot  say. 
Chance  has  doubtless  brought  me  in  contact 
with  several  persons  of  that  class,  but  no 
sign  of  recognition  has  passed  between  us. 
As  I  understand  it,  monsieur,  death  is  a 
transition  state,  like  life  itself,  and  leaves 
the  mystery  still  unsolved.  Outside  of  my 
own  individual  consciousness  everything 
has  been  nearly  a  blank." 

"  Then,  possibly,  you  don't  know  where 
you  are  at  present  ?  " 

"  I  conjecture ;  I  am  far  from  positive, 
but  I  think  I  am  in  the  land  of  Benjamin 
Franklin." 

"  Well,  yes ;  but  I  should  say  the  late 
Benjamin  Franklin,  if  I  were  you.  It  is 
many  years  since  he  was  an  active  factor  in 
our  public  affairs." 

"  I  was  not  aware  —  my  almost  absolute 
seclusion  —  monsieur  understands." 


120     THE  CHEVALIER  DE  RESSEGUIER 

"  In  your  retirement,  Chevalier,  you  have 
missed  much.  Vast  organic  upheavals  have 
occurred  meanwhile ;  things  that  seemed  to 
reach  down  to  the  bed-rock  of  permanence 
have  been  torn  up  by  the  roots.  The  im 
possible  has  become  the  commonplace.  The 
whole  surface  of  the  earth  has  undergone  a 
change,  and  nowhere  have  the  changes  been 
more  radical  and  marvelous  than  in  your 
own  beloved  France.  Would  you  not  like 
me  briefly  to  indicate  a  few  of  them  ?  " 

"  If  monsieur  will  be  so  obliging." 

"  In  the  first  place,  you  should  know  that 
Danton,  Desmoulins,  Robespierre,  and  the 
rest,  each  in  his  turn,  fell  into  the  hands  of 
your  old  friend  M.  Sanson." 

"  A  la  bonne  heure  I  I  knew  it  would 
come  to  that.  When  France  wanted  to  re 
generate  society  she  ought  to  have  begun 
with  the  sans  culottes." 

"The  republic  shortly  gave  way  to  a 
monarchy.  A  great  soldier  sat  upon  the 
throne,  a  new  Caesar,  who  flung  down  his 
gauntlet  to  the  whole  world,  and  well-nigh 
conquered  it ;  but  he  too  fell  from  his  lofty 


THE   CHEVALIER  DE  RESSEGUIER     121 

height,  suddenly,  like  Lucifer,  never  to  rise 
again." 

"  And  how  did  men  call  him  ?  " 

"  Napoleon  Bonaparte." 

"Bonaparte?  Bonaparte?  —  it  is  not  a 
French  name,  monsieur." 

"After  him  the  Bourbon  reigned;  then 
there  was  a  republic;  and  then  another 
Caesar  came  —  an  imitation  Caesar  —  who 
let  a  German  king  conquer  France,  and 
bivouac  his  Uhlans  under  the  lime-trees  in 
the  Champs  Ely  sees." 

"  A  German  with  his  foot  upon  the  neck 
of  France !  Ah,  monsieur,  was  I  not  happy 
to  escape  the  knowledge  of  all  these  things? 
Mon  Dieuf  but  he  was  a  prophet,  that 
Louis  XV.,  with  his  'Apres  nous  le  de*- 
luge ! '  Tell  me  no  more !  I  am  well  con 
tent  to  wait  in  ignorance." 

"  To  wait  for  what,  Chevalier  ?  " 

"For  the  end  of  the  world,  I  suppose. 
Really,  monsieur  puts  the  most  perplexing 
questions  —  like  a  juge  d' instruction" 

I  may  here  remark  that  throughout  our 
conversation  the  immobility  of  the  face  of 


122     THE  CHEVALIER  DE  RESSEGUIER 

the  Chevalier  de  Resseguier,  taken  in  con 
nection  with  what  he  was  saying,  had  a 
grotesque  effect.  His  moods  were  many, 
but  his  expression  was  one.  Whether  he 
spoke  sadly,  or  playfully,  or  vehemently, 
there  was  that  stolid,  stony  outline,  gazing 
into  vacancy  like  the  face  of  a  sphinx. 

"But,  Chevalier,"  I  said,  "it  must  be  a 
monotonous  business,  this  waiting." 

"  Yes,  and  no,  monsieur.  I  am  at  least 
spared  the  tumult  and  struggle  of  earthly 
existence;  for  what  is  the  life  of  man  but 
une  milice  continuelle?  Here  I  am  safe 
from  debts  and  the  want  of  louis  d*or  to 
pay  them  ;  safe  from  false  love,  false  friend 
ship,  and  all  hypocrisy.  I  am  neither  hot 
nor  cold,  neither  hungry  nor  thirsty.  Par- 
bleuf  monsieur,  I  might  be  much  worse 
off." 

"  Yet  at  intervals  your  solitude  must 
weigh  upon  you." 

"  Then  I  take  a  little  nap  of  four  or  five 
years  —  four  or  five  years  according  to 
monsieur's  computation.  The  Gregorian 
calendar  does  not  exist  for  me." 


THE  CHEVALIER  DE  RE3SEGUIER     123 

"  Perhaps  you  feel  like  taking  a  little 
nap  now,"  I  suggested,  with  a  sudden  de 
sire  to  be  rid  of  him. 

"Not  at  all,"  replied  the  chevalier 
briskly.  "  I  never  felt  less  like  it." 

"  I  am  sorry,  for  it  is  really  an  embar 
rassing  question,  when  I  come  to  think  of 
it,  what  I  am  to  do  with  you." 

"  Monsieur  is  too  kind  to  trouble  him 
self  with  thinking  about  it.  Why  do  any 
thing  ?  How  charming  it  all  has  been,  ex 
cept  that  Madame  for  an  instant  mistook 
me  for  a  melon !  We  have  our  little  vani 
ties,  nous  autres  1  Here  I  find  myself  au 
mieux.  I  am  a  man  of  letters,  a  poet 
whose  works  have  been  crowned  by  the 
Bastille  if  not  by  the  Academic.  These 
volumes  in  polished  calf  and  fragrant 
crushed  levant  make  a  congenial  atmos 
phere,  n'est-ce  pas  ?  Formerly  my  Greek 
and  Latin  were  not  of  the  best ;  but  now, 
naturally,  I  speak  both  with  fluency,  for 
they  are  dead  languages,  as  monsieur  is 
aware.  My  English  —  monsieur  can  judge. 
I  acquired  it  in  London  during  a  year  or 


124     THE  CHEVALIER  DE  RESSEGUIER 

two  when  my  presence  in  Paris  was  not  ab 
solutely  indispensable.  So  why  not  let  me 
remain  where  I  am?  Un  bel  esprit  is  never 
de  trop.  Monsieur  need  never  more  be  in 
want  of  a  pleasant  companion.  I  will  con- 
verse  with  him,  I  will  dissipate  his  ennui. 
I  am  no  longer  of  those  who  disappear 
abruptly.  I  will  stay  with  monsieur  for 
ever." 

This  monstrous  proposition  struck  me 
cold. 

"No,  Chevalier,"  I  said,  with  as  much 
calmness  as  I  could  command ;  "  such  an 
arrangement  would  not  suit  me  in  any  par 
ticular.  You  have  not  read  the  *  Memoires ' 
of  Madame  du  Barry,  and  I  have.  Our 
views  of  life  are  antagonistic.  The  associ 
ation  you  propose  is  wholly  impracticable." 

"  I  am  here  by  monsieur's  own  invitation, 
am  I  not?  Did  I  thrust  myself  upon  him  ? 
No.  Did  I  even  seek  his  acquaintance  ? 
No.  It  was  monsieur  who  made  all  the  ad 
vances.  There  were  three  of  us,  and  he 
selected  me.  I  am  deeply  sensible  of  the 
honor.  I  would  give  expression  to  that 


THE  CHEVALIER  DE  RES8EGUIER     125 

sensibility.  I  would,  if  monsieur  were  dis 
posed,  render  him  important  literary  servi 
ces.  For  example,  I  could  furnish  him 
with  many  curious  particulars  touching  the 
CEil-de-Boeuf ,  together  with  some  startling 
facts  which  establish  beyond  doubt  the 
identity  of  the  Man  in  the  Iron  Mask." 

"  Such  information,  unfortunately,  would 
be  of  no  use  to  me." 

"  Of  no  use  ?   Monsieur  astonishes  me  1  " 

"  I  could  not  avail  myself  of  statements 
made  by  the  Chevalier  de  Resseguier." 

"  Monsieur  means  "  — 

"  Precisely  what  I  say." 

"  But  what  monsieur  says  is  not  precisely 
clear.  His  words  are  capable  of  being  con 
strued  as  insulting.  Under  different  cir 
cumstances,  I  should  send  two  of  my  friends 
to  demand  of  monsieur  the  satisfaction 
which  one  galant  homme  never  refuses 
another." 

"  And  you  would  get  it !  "  I  returned 
warmly. 

"  I  could  wish  that  I  had  monsieur  for 
one  little  quarter  of  an  hour  in  some  shady 


126     THE   CHEVALIER  DE  RES8EGU1ER 

avenue  at  Versailles,  or  on  the  Terrasse  des 
Feuillants  in  the  garden  of  the  Tuileries." 

"  I  wish  you  had,  and  then  you  'd  wish 
you  had  n't,  for  I  should  give  you  a  sound 
caning  to  add  to  your  stock  of  permanent 
reminiscences." 

"  Monsieur  forgets  himself,"  said  the 
chevalier,  and  the  chevalier  was  quite  right. 
"  The  rapier  and  the  pistol  are  —  or  were 
—  my  weapons.  Fortunately  for  monsieur 
I  am  obliged  to  say  were.  Monsieur  can 
be  impertinent  with  impunity." 

"  I  've  a  great  mind  to  knock  your  head 
off  !  "  I  cried,  again  in  the  wrong. 

"  A  work  of  supererogation.  I  beg  leave 
to  call  monsieur's  unintelligent  attention 
to  the  fact  that  my  head  is  already  off." 

"  It 's  a  pity,"  I  said,  "  that  persons  of 
your  stripe  cannot  be  guillotined  two  or 
three  times.  However,  I  can  throw  you 
out  of  the  window." 

"  Throw  me  out  of  the  window  !  "  cried 
the  Chevalier  de  Resseguier  in  a  rage. 

At  that  instant  the  door  of  the  library 
was  opened  hurriedly,  and  a  draft  of  wind, 


THE   CHEVALIER  DE  RESSEGU1ER     127 

sweeping  through  the  apartment,  tumbled 
the  insecurely  placed  skull  from  its  perch. 

"  Do  you  know  how  late  it  is,  dear  ? " 
said  my  wife,  standing  on  the  threshold, 
with  a  lace  shawl  drawn  about  her  shoul 
ders  and  her  bare  feet  thrust  into  a  pair  of 
Turkish  slippers.  "  It  is  half  past  two.  I 
verily  believe  you  must  have  fallen  asleep 
over  your  work !  " 

I  stared  for  a  moment  at  my  wife,  and 
made  no  reply.  Then  I  picked  up  the 
Chevalier  de  Resseguier,  who  had  sustained 
a  double  fracture  of  the  jaw,  and  carefully 
replaced  him,  fragments  and  all,  on  the 
little  faience  bracket  over  the  window. 


GOLIATH 


IT  was  raining  —  softly,  fluently,  persis 
tently —  raining  as  it  rains  on  the  afternoon 
of  the  morning  when  you  hesitate  a  minute 
or  two  at  the  hat-stand,  and  finally  decide 
not  to  take  your  umbrella  down  town  with 
you.  It  was  one  of  those  fine  rains  —  I  am 
not  praising  it  —  which  wet  you  to  the  skin 
in  about  four  seconds.  A  sharp  twenty- 
minutes'  walk  lay  between  my  office  in 
Court  Street  and  my  rooms  in  Huntington 
Avenue.  I  was  standing  meditatively  in 
the  doorway  of  the  former  establishment  on 
the  lookout  for  a  hack  or  a  herdic.  An  un 
usual  number  of  these  vehicles  were  hurry 
ing  in  all  directions,  but  as  each  approached 
within  the  arc  of  my  observation  the  face 
of  some  fortunate  occupant  was  visible 
through  the  blurred  glass  of  the  closed 
window. 


GOLIATH  129 

Presently  a  coupe*  leisurely  turned  the 
corner,  as  if  in  search  of  a  fare.  I  hailed 
the  driver,  and  though  he  apparently  took 
no  notice  of  my  gesture,  the  coupe"  slowed 
up  and  stopped,  or  nearly  stopped,  at  the 
curbstone  directly  in  front  of  me.  I  dashed 
across  the  narrow  sidewalk,  pulled  open  the 
door,  and  stepped  into  the  vehicle.  As  I 
did  so,  some  one  else  on  the  opposite  side 
performed  the  same  evolution,  and  the  two 
of  us  stood  for  an  instant  with  the  crowns 
of  our  hats  glued  together.  Then  we  seated 
ourselves  simultaneously,  each  by  this  token 
claiming  the  priority  of  possession. 

"I  beg  your  pardon,  sir,"  I  said,  "but 
this  is  my  carriage." 

"  I  beg  your  pardon,  sir,"  was  the  equally 
frigid  reply ;  "  the  carriage  is  mine." 

"  I  hailed  the  man  from  that  doorway," 
I  said,  with  firmness. 

"  And  I  hailed  him  from  the  crossing." 

"  But  I  signaled  him  first." 

My  companion  disdained  to  respond  to 
that  statement,  but  settled  himself  back  on 
the  cushions  as  if  he  had  resolved  to  spend 
the  rest  of  his  life  there. 


130  GOLIATH 

"  We  will  leave  it  to  the  driver,"  I  said. 

The  subject  of  this  colloquy  now  twisted 
his  body  round  on  the  dripping  box,  and 
shouted :  — 

"  Where  to,  gentlemen  ?  " 

I  lowered  the  plate  glass,  and  addressed 
him:  — 

"  There 's  a  mistake  here.  This  gentle 
man  and  I  both  claim  the  coupe.  Which 
of  us  first  called  you  ?  "  But  the  driver 
"  could  n't  tell  t'  other  from  which,"  as  he 
expressed  it.  Having  two  fares  inside,  he 
of  course  had  no  wild  desire  to  pronounce  a 
decision  that  would  necessarily  cancel  one 
of  them. 

The  situation  had  reached  this  awkward 
phase  when  the  intruder  leaned  forward 
and  inquired,  with  a  total  change  in  his 
intonation :  — 

"  Are  you  not  Mr.  David  Willis  ?  " 

"  That  is  my  name." 

"  I  am  Edwin  Watson ;  we  used  to  know 
each  other  slightly  at  college." 

All  along  there  had  been  something  fa 
miliar  to  me  in  the  man's  face,  but  I  had 


GOLIATH  131 

attributed  it  to  the  fact  that  I  hated  him 
enough  at  first  sight  to  have  known  him 
intimately  for  ten  years.  Of  course,  after 
this,  there  was  no  further  dispute  about  the 
carriage.  Mr.  Watson  wanted  to  go  to  the 
Providence  station,  which  lay  directly  on 
the  route  to  Huntington  Avenue,  and  I  was 
charmed  to  have  his  company.  We  fell 
into  pleasant  chat  concerning  the  old  Har 
vard  days,  and  were  surprised  when  the 
coupe  drew  up  in  front  of  the  red-brick 
clock-tower  of  the  station. 

The  acquaintance,  thus  renewed  by 
chance,  continued.  Though  we  had  resided 
six  years  in  the  same  city,  and  had  not  met 
before,  we  were  now  continually  meeting  — 
at  the  club,  at  the  down-town  restaurant 
where  we  lunched,  at  various  houses  where 
we  visited  in  common.  Mr.  Watson  was  in 
the  banking  business ;  he  had  been  married 
one  or  two  years,  and  was  living  out  of 
town,  in  what  he  called  "  a  little  box,"  on 
the  slope  of  Blue  Hill.  He  had  once  or 
twice  invited  me  to  run  out  to  dine  and 
spend  the  night  with  him,  but  some  engage* 


132  GOLIATH 

ment  or  other  disability  had  interfered. 
One  evening,  however,  as  we  were  playing 
billiards  at  the  St.  Botolph,  I  accepted  his 
invitation  for  a  certain  Tuesday.  Watson, 
who  was  having  a  vacation  at  the  time,  was 
not  to  accompany  me  from  town,  but  was  to 
meet  me  with  his  pony-cart  at  Green  Lodge, 
a  small  flag-station  on  the  Providence  rail 
way,  two  or  three  miles  from  "  The  Briers," 
the  name  of  his  place. 

"  I  shall  be  proud  to  show  you  my  wife," 
he  said,  "  and  the  baby  —  and  Goliath." 

"Goliath?" 

"  That  's  the  dog,"  answered  Watson, 
with  a  laugh.  "  You  and  Goliath  ought  to 
meet  —  David  and  Goliath !  " 

If  Watson  had  mentioned  the  dog  earlier 
in  the  conversation  I  might  have  shied  at 
his  hospitality.  I  may  as  well  at  once  con 
fess  that  I  do  not  like  dogs,  and  am  afraid 
of  them.  Of  some  things  I  am  not  afraid ; 
there  have  been  occasions  when  my  courage 
was  not  to  be  doubted  —  for  example,  the 
night  I  secured  the  burglar  in  my  dining- 
room,  and  held  him  until  the  police  came ; 


GOLIATH  133 

and  notably  the  day  I  had  an  interview 
with  a  young  bull  in  the  middle  of  a  pas- 
ture,  where  there  was  not  so  much  as  a  bur 
dock  leaf  to  fly  to ;  with  my  red-silk  pocket- 
handkerchief  I  deployed  him  as  coolly  as  if 
I  had  been  a  professional  matador.  I  state 
these  unadorned  facts  in  no  vainglorious 
mood.  If  that  burglar  had  been  a  collie, 
or  that  bull  a  bull-terrier,  I  should  have 
collapsed  on  the  spot. 

No  man  can  be  expected  to  be  a  hero  in 
all  directions.  Doubtless  Achilles  himself 
had  his  secret  little  cowardice,  if  truth  were 
known.  That  acknowledged  vulnerable  heel 
of  his  was  perhaps  not  his  only  weak  point. 
While  I  am  thus  covertly  drawing  a  com 
parison  between  myself  and  Achilles,  I  will 
say  that  that  same  extreme  sensitiveness  of 
heel  is  also  unhappily  mine  ;  for  nothing  so 
sends  a  chill  into  it,  and  thence  along  my 
vertebrae,  as  to  have  a  strange  dog  come  up 
sniffing  behind  me.  Some  inscrutable  in 
stinct  has  advised  all  strange  dogs  of  my 
antipathy  and  pusillanimity. 

"  The  little  dogs  and  all, 
Tray,  Blanche,  and  Sweetheart,  see,  they  bark  at  me." 


134  GOLIATH 

They  sally  forth  from  picturesque  verandas 
and  unsuspected  hidings,  to  show  their  teeth 
as  I  go  by.  In  a  spot  where  there  is  no 
dog,  one  will  germinate  if  he  happens  to 
find  out  that  I  am  to  pass  that  way.  Some 
times  they  follow  me  for  miles.  Strange 
dogs  that  wag  their  tails  at  other  persons 
growl  at  me  from  over  fences,  and  across 
vacant  lots,  and  at  street  corners. 

"  So  you  keep  a  dog  ?  "  I  remarked  care 
lessly,  as  I  dropped  the  spot-ball  into  a 
pocket. 

"  Yes,"  returned  Watson.  "  What  is  a 
country-place  without  a  dog  ?  "  • 

I  said  to  myself,  "  I  know  what  a  country- 
place  is  with  a  dog ;  it 's  a  place  I  should 
prefer  to  avoid." 

But  as  I  had  accepted  the  invitation,  and 
as  Watson  was  to  pick  me  up  at  Green 
Lodge  station,  and,  presumably,  see  me 
safely  into  the  house,  I  said  no  more. 

Living  as  he  did  on  a  lonely  road,  and 
likely  at  any  hour  of  the  night  to  have  a 
burglar  or  two  drop  in  on  him,  it  was 
proper  that  Watson  should  have  a  dog  on 


GOLIATH  135 

the  grounds.  In  any  event  he  would  have 
done  so,  for  he  had  always  had  a  maniacal 
passion  for  the  canine  race.  I  remember 
his  keeping  at  Cambridge  a  bull-pup  that 
was  the  terror  of  the  neighborhood.  He 
had  his  rooms  outside  the  college-yard  in 
order  that  he  might  reside  with  this  fiend. 
A  good  mastiff  or  a  good  collie  —  if  there 
are  any  good  collies  and  good  mastiffs  — 
is  perhaps  a  necessity  to  exposed  country- 
houses  ;  but  what  is  the  use  of  allowing  him 
to  lie  around  loose  on  the  landscape,  as  is 
generally  done?  He  ought  to  be  chained 
up  until  midnight.  He  should  be  taught  to 
distinguish  between  a  burglar  and  an  in 
offensive  person  passing  along  the  highway 
with  no  intention  of  taking  anything  but 
the  air.  Men  with  a  taste  for  dogs  owe  it 
to  society  not  to  cultivate  dogs  that  have  an 
indiscriminate  taste  for  men. 

The  Tuesday  on  which  I  was  to  pass  the 
night  with  Watson  was  a  day  simply  packed 
with  evil  omens.  The  feathered  cream  at 
breakfast  struck  the  key-note  of  the  day's 
irritations.  Everything  went  at  cross-pur- 


136  GOLIATH 

poses  in  the  office,  and  at  the  last  moment 
a  telegram  imperatively  demanding  an 
answer  nearly  caused  me  to  miss  that  six 
o'clock  train  —  the  only  train  that  stopped 
at  Green  Lodge.  There  were  two  or  three 
thousand  other  trains  which  did  not  stop 
there.  I  was  in  no  frame  of  mind  for  ru 
ral  pleasures  when  I  finally  seated  myself 
in  the  "  six  o'clock  accommodation "  with 
my  gripsack  beside  me. 

The  run  from  town  to  Green  Lodge  is 
about  twenty-five  minutes,  and  the  last 
stoppage  before  reaching  that  station  is 
at  Readville.  We  were  possibly  half-way 
between  these  two  points  when  the  train 
slackened  and  came  to  a  dead  halt  amid 
some  ragged  woodland.  Heads  were  in 
stantly  thrust  out  of  the  windows  right  and 
left,  and  everybody's  face  was  an  interro 
gation.  Presently  a  brakeman,  with  a  small 
red  flag  in  his  hand,  stationed  himself  some 
two  hundred  yards  in  the  rear  of  the  train, 
in  order  to  prevent  the  evening  express 
from  telescoping  us.  Then  our  engine  sul 
lenly  detached  itself  from  the  tender,  and 


GOLIATH  137 

disappeared.  What  had  happened?  An 
overturned  gravel-car  lay  across  the  track 
a  quarter  of  a  mile  beyond.  It  was  fully 
an  hour  before  the  obstruction  was  removed, 
and  our  engine  had  backed  down  again  to 
its  coupling.  I  smiled  bitterly,  thinking  of 
Watson  and  his  dinner. 

The  station  at  Green  Lodge  consists  of 
a  low  platform  upon  which  is  a  shed  cov 
ered  on  three  sides  with  unpainted  deal 
boards  hacked  nearly  to  pieces  by  tramps. 
In  autumn  and  winter  the  wind  here,  sweep 
ing  across  the  wide  Neponset  marshes,  must 
be  cruel.  That  is  probably  why  the  tramps 
have  destroyed  their  only  decent  shelter 
between  Readville  and  Canton.  On  this 
evening  in  early  June,  as  I  stepped  upon 
the  platform,  the  air  was  merely  a  ripple 
and  a  murmur  among  the  maples  and  wil 
lows. 

I  looked  around  for  Watson  and  the 
pony-cart.  What  had  occurred  was  obvi 
ous.  He  had  waited  an  hour  for  me,  and 
then  driven  home  with  the  conviction  that 
the  train  must  have  passed  before  he  got 


138  GOLIATH 

there,  and  that  I,  for  some  reason,  had 
failed  to  come  on  it.  The  capsized  gravel- 
car  was  an  episode  of  which  he  could  have 
known  nothing. 

A  walk  of  three  miles  was  not  an  inspir 
iting  prospect,  and  would  not  have  been 
even  if  I  had  had  some  slight  idea  of  where 
"  The  Briers  "  was,  or  where  I  was  myself. 
At  one  side  of  the  shed,  and  crossing  the 
track  at  right  angles,  ran  a  straight,  narrow 
road  that  quickly  lost  itself  in  an  arbor  of 
swamp-willows.  Beyond  the  tree-tops  rose 
the  serrated  line  of  the  Blue  Hills,  now 
touched  with  the  twilight's  tenderest  ame 
thyst.  Over  there,  in  that  direction  some 
where,  lay  Watson's  domicile. 

"  What  I  ought  to  have  done  to-day,"  I 
reflected,  "  was  to  stay  in  bed.  This  is  one 
of  the  days  when  I  am  unfitted  to  move 
among  my  fellow-men,  and  cope  with  the 
complexities  of  existence." 

Just  then  my  ear  caught  the  sound  of  a 
cart-wheel  grating  on  an  unoiled  axle.  It 
was  a  withered  farmer  in  a  rickety  open 
wagon  slowly  approaching  the  railway  track, 


GOLIATH  139 

and  going  toward  the  hills — my  own  in 
tended  destination.  I  stopped  the  man  and 
explained  my  dilemma.  He  was  willing, 
after  a  suspicious  inventory  of  my  person, 
to  give  me  a  lift  to  the  end  of  the  Green 
Lodge  road.  There  I  could  take  the  old 
turnpike.  He  believed  that  the  Watson 
place  was  half  a  mile  or  so  down  the  turn 
pike  toward  Milton  way.  I  climbed  up 
beside  him  with  alacrity. 

Beyond  giving  vent  to  a  sneeze  or  two 
left  over  from  the  previous  winter,  the  old 
man  made  no  sign  of  life  as  we  drove  along. 
He  seemed  to  be  in  a  state  of  suspended 
animation.  I  was  as  little  disposed  to  talk. 

It  was  a  balmy  evening,  the  air  was 
charged  with  sweet  wood-scents,  and  here 
and  there  a  star  half -opened  an  eyelid  on 
the  peaceful  dusk.  After  the  frets  of  the 
day,  it  was  soothing  thus  to  be  drawn  at  a 
snail's  pace  through  the  fragrance  and  still 
ness  of  that  fern-fringed  road,  with  the 
night  weaving  and  unweaving  its  mysteries 
of  light  and  shade  on  either  side.  Now 
and  then  the  twitter  of  an  oriole  in  some 


140  GOLIATH 

pendent  nest  overhead  added,  as  it  were, 
to  the  silence.  I  was  yielding  myself  up 
wholly  to  the  glamour  of  the  time  and  place, 
when  suddenly  I  thought  of  Goliath.  At 
that  moment  Goliath  was  probably  prowling 
about  Watson's  front  yard  seeking  whom 
he  might  devour ;  and  I  was  that  predes 
tined  nourishment. 

I  knew  what  sort  of  watch-dog  Watson 
would  be  likely  to  keep.  There  was  a  tough 
streak  in  Watson  himself,  a  kind  of  thor 
oughbred  obstinacy  —  the  way  he  had  held 
on  to  that  coupe  months  before  illustrated 
it.  An  animal  with  a  tenacious  grip,  and 
on  the  verge  of  hydrophobia,  was  what 
would  naturally  commend  itself  to  his  lik 
ing.  He  had  specified  Goliath,  but  maybe 
he  had  half  a  dozen  other  dragons  to  guard 
his  hillside  Hesperides.  I  had  depended 
on  Watson  meeting  me  at  the  station,  and 
now,  when  I  was  no  longer  expected,  I  was 
forced  to  invade  his  premises  in  the  dark 
ness  of  the  night,  and  run  the  risk  of  being 
torn  limb  from  limb  before  I  could  make 
myself  known  to  the  family.  I  recalled 


GOLIATH  141 

Watson's  inane  remark,  "  You  and  Goliath 
ought  to  meet  —  David  and  Goliath  !  "  It 
now  struck  me  as  a  most  unseemly  and 
heartless  pleasantry. 

These  reflections  were  not  calculated  to 
heighten  my  enjoyment  of  the  beauties  of 
nature.  The  gathering  darkness,  with  its 
few  large,  liquid  stars,  which  a  moment 
before  had  seemed  so  poetical,  began  to  fill 
me  with  apprehension.  In  the  daylight 
one  has  resources,  but  what  or*  earth  was  I 
going  to  do  in  the  dark  with  Goliath,  and, 
likely  enough,  a  couple  of  bloodhounds  at 
my  throat?  I  wished  myself  safely  back 
among  the  crowded  streets  and  electric 
lights  of  the  city.  In  a  few  minutes  more 
I  was  to  be  left  alone  and  defenseless  on  a 
dismal  highway. 

When  we  reached  the  junction  of  the 
Green  Lodge  road  and  the  turnpike,  I  felt 
that  I  was  parting  from  the  only  friend  I 
had  in  the  world.  The  man  had  not  spoken 
two  words  during  the  drive,  and  now  rather 
gruffly  refused  my  proffered  half-dollar ; 
but  I  would  have  gone  home  with  him  if 


142  GOLIATH 

he  had  asked  me.  I  hinted  that  it  would 
be  much  to  his  pecuniary  advantage  if  he 
were  willing  to  go  so  far  out  of  his  course 
as  the  door-step  of  Mr.  Watson's  house; 
but  either  because  wealth  had  no  charms 
for  him,  or  because  he  had  failed  to  under 
stand  my  proposition,  he  made  no  answer, 
and,  giving  his  mare  a  slap  with  the  ends 
of  the  reins,  rattled  off  into  space. 

On  turning  into  the  main  road  I  left 
behind  me  a  cluster  of  twinkling  lights 
emitted  from  some  dozen  or  twenty  little 
cottages,  which,  as  I  have  since  been  told, 
constitute  the  village  of  Ponkapog.  It  was 
apparently  alive  with  dogs.  I  heard  them 
going  off,  one  after  another,  like  a  string 
of  Chinese  crackers,  as  the  ancient  farmer 
with  his  creaking  axle  passed  on  through 
the  village.  I  was  not  reluctant  to  leave 
so  alert  a  neighborhood,  whatever  destiny 
awaited  me  beyond. 

Fifteen  or  twenty  minutes  later  I  stood 
in  front  of  what  I  knew  at  a  glance  to  be 
"  The  Briers,"  for  Watson  had  described 
it  to  me.  The  three  sharp  gables  of  his 


GOLIATH  143 

description  had  not  quite  melted  into  the 
blackness  which  was  rapidly  absorbing 
every  object ;  and  there  too,  but  indistinct, 
were  the  twin  stone  gate-posts  with  the 
cheerful  Grecian  vases  on  top,  like  the  en 
trance  to  a  cemetery. 

I  cautiously  approached  the  paling  and 
looked  over  into  the  inclosure.  It  was  gloomy 
with  shrubbery,  dwarf  spruces,  and  Norway 
pines,  and  needed  nothing  but  a  few  ob 
elisks  and  lachrymal  urns  to  complete  the 
illusion.  In  the  centre  of  the  space  rose  a 
circular  mound  of  several  yards  in  diam 
eter,  piled  with  rocks,  on  which  probably 
were  mosses  and  nasturtiums.  It  was  too 
dark  to  distinguish  anything  clearly ;  even 
the  white  gravel  walk  encircling  the  mound 
left  one  in  doubt.  The  house  stood  well 
back  on  a  slight  elevation,  with  two  or  three 
steps  leading  down  from  the  piazza  to  this 
walk.  Here  and  there  a  strong  light  il 
lumined  a  lattice-window.  I  particularly 
noticed  one  on  the  ground  floor  in  an  ell  of 
the  building,  a  wide  window  with  diamond- 
shaped  panes  — the  dining-room.  The  cur- 


144  GOLIATH 

tains  were  looped  back,  and  I  could  see  the 
pretty  housemaid  in  her  cap  coming  and  go 
ing.  She  was  removing  the  dinner  things  : 
she  must  have  long  ago  taken  away  my 
unused  plate. 

The  contrast  between  a  brilliantly  lighted, 
luxurious  interior  and  the  bleak  night  out 
side  is  a  contrast  that  never  appeals  to  me 
in  vain.  I  seldom  have  any  sympathy  for 
the  outcast  in  sentimental  fiction  until  the 
inevitable  moment  when  the  author  plants 
her  against  the  area-railing  under  the  win 
dows  of  the  paternal  mansion.  I  like  to 
have  this  happen  on  an  inclement  Christ 
mas  or  Thanksgiving  eve  —  and  it  always 
does. 

But  even  on  a  pleasant  evening  in  early 
June  it  is  not  agreeable  to  find  one's  self 
excluded  from  the  family  circle,  especially 
when  one  has  traveled  fifteen  miles  to  get 
there.  I  regarded  the  inviting  facade  of 
Watson's  villa,  and  then  I  contemplated 
the  sombre  and  unexplored  tract  of  land 
which  I  must  needs  traverse  in  order  to 
reach  the  door-step.  How  still  it  was! 


GOLIATH  145 

The  very  stillness  had  a  sort  of  menace  in 
it.  My  imagination  peopled  those  black 
interstices  under  the  trees  with  "gorgons 
and  hydras  and  chimaeras  dire."  There 
certainly  was  an  air  of  latent  dog  about 
the  place,  though  as  yet  no  dog  had  devel 
oped.  However,  unless  I  desired  to  rouse 
the  inmates  from  their  beds,  I  saw  that  I 
ought  to  announce  myself  without  much 
further  delay.  I  softly  opened  the  gate, 
which,  having  a  heavy  ball-and-chain  attach 
ment,  immediately  slipped  from  my  hand 
and  slammed  to  with  a  bang  as  I  stepped 
within. 

I  was  not  surprised,  but  I  was  paralyzed 
all  the  same,  at  instantly  hearing  the  fa 
miliar  sound  of  a  watch-dog  suddenly  rush 
ing  from  his  kennel.  The  kennel  in  this 
instance  was  on  a  piazza :  a  convenient 
arrangement  —  for  the  dog  —  in  case  of 
visitors. 

The  next  sound  I  heard  was  the  scrabble 
of  the  animal's  four  paws  as  he  landed  on 
the  graveled  pathway.  There  he  hesitated, 
irresolute,  as  if  he  were  making  up  his  dia- 


146  GOLIATH 

bolical  mind  which  side  of  the  mound  he 
would  take.  He  neither  growled  nor  barked 
in  the  interim,  being  evidently  one  of  those 
wide-mouthed,  reticent  brutes  that  mean 
business  and  indulge  in  no  vain  flourish.  I 
afterward  changed  my  mind  on  the  latter 
point. 

I  held  my  breath,  and  waited.  Presently 
I  heard  him  stealthily  approaching  me  on 
the  left.  I  at  once  hastened  up  the  right- 
hand  path,  having  tossed  my  gripsack  in 
his  direction,  with  the  hope  that  while  he 
was  engaged  in  tearing  it  to  pieces,  I  might 
possibly  be  able  to  reach  the  piazza  and 
ring  the  door-bell. 

My  ruse  failed,  however,  and  the  grip 
sack,  which  might  have  served  as  a  weapon 
of  defense,  had  been  sacrificed.  The  dog 
continued  his  systematic  approach,  and  I 
was  obliged  to  hurry  past  the  piazza-steps. 
A  few  seconds  brought  me  back  to  the  point 
of  my  departure.  Superficially  considered, 
the  garden-gate,  which  now  lay  at  my  hand, 
offered  a  facile  mode  of  escape ;  but  I  was 
ignorant  of  the  fastenings ;  I  had  forgotten 


GOLIATH  147 

which  way  it  swung ;  besides,  as  I  had  no 
stop-over  ticket,  it  was  necessary  that  I 
should  continue  on  my  circular  journey. 

So  far  as  I  could  judge,  the  dog  was  now 
about  three  yards  in  my  rear ;  I  was  unable 
to  see  him,  but  I  could  plainly  detect  his 
quick  respiration,  and  his  deliberate  foot 
falls  on  the  gravel.  I  wondered  why  he  did 
not  spring  upon  me  at  once ;  but  he  knew 
he  had  his  prey,  he  knew  I  was  afraid  of 
him,  and  he  was  playing  with  me  as  a  cat 
plays  with  a  mouse.  In  certain  animals 
there  is  a  refinement  of  cruelty  which  some 
times  makes  them  seem  almost  human.  If 
I  believed  in  the  transmigration  of  souls,  I 
should  say  that  the  spirit  of  Caligula  had 
passed  into  dogs,  and  that  of  Cleopatra  into 
cats. 

It  is  easily  conceivable  that  I  made  no 
such  reflection  at  the  moment,  for  by  this 
time  my  brisk  trot  had  turned  into  a  run, 
and  I  was  spinning  around  the  circle  at  the 
rate  of  ten  miles  an  hour,  with  the  dog  at 
my  heels.  Now  I  shot  by  the  piazza,  and 
now  past  the  gate,  until  presently  I  ceased 


148  GOLIATH 

to  know  which  was  the  gate  and  which  the 
piazza.  I  believe  that  I  shouted  "  Watson ! " 
once  or  twice,  no  doubt  at  the  wrong  place, 
but  I  do  not  remember.  At  all  events,  I 
failed  to  make  myself  heard.  My  brain  was 
in  such  confusion  that  at  intervals  I  could 
not  for  the  soul  of  me  tell  whether  I  was 
chasing  the  dog,  or  the  dog  was  chasing  me. 
Now  I  almost  felt  his  nose  at  my  heel,  and 
now  I  seemed  upon  the  point  of  trampling 
him  underfoot. 

My  swift  rotatory  movement,  combined 
with  the  dinner  which  I  had  not  had,  soon 
induced  a  sort  of  vertigo.  It  was  a  purely 
unreasoning  instinct  that  prevented  me 
from  flying  off  at  a  tangent  and  plunging 
into  the  shrubbery.  Strange  lights  began 
to  come  into  my  eyes,  and  in  one  of  those 
phosphorescent  gleams  I  saw  a  shapeless 
black  object  lying,  or  crouching,  in  my 
path.  I  automatically  kicked  it  into  the 
outer  darkness.  It  was  only  my  derby  hat, 
which  had  fallen  off  on  one  of  the  previous 
trips. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  confused  state  of 


GOLIATH  149 

my  mind.  The  right  lobe  of  my  brain  had 
suspended  all  natural  action,  but  with  the 
other  lobe  I  was  enabled  to  speculate  on  the 
probable  duration  of  my  present  career.  In 
spite  of  my  terror,  an  ironical  smile  crept  to 
my  lips  as  I  reflected  that  I  might  perhaps 
keep  this  thing  up  until  sunrise,  unless  a 
midnight  meal  was  one  of  the  dog's  regular 
habits.  A  prolonged  angry  snarl  now  and 
then  admonished  me  that  his  patience  was 
about  exhausted. 

I  had  accomplished  the  circuit  of  the 
mound  for  the  tenth  —  possibly  the  twenti 
eth  —  time  (I  cannot  be  positive),  when  the 
front  door  of  the  villa  was  opened  with  a 
jerk,  and  Watson,  closely  followed  by  the 
pretty  housemaid,  stepped  out  upon  the 
piazza.  He  held  in  his  hand  a  German 
student-lamp,  which  he  came  within  an  ace 
of  dropping  as  the  light  fell  upon  my  coun 
tenance. 

"  Good  heavens  !  Willis  ;  is  this  you  ? 
Where  did  you  tumble  from  ?  What 's  be 
come  of  your  hat?  How  did  you  get  here  ?" 

"  Six  o'clock  train  —  Green  Lodge  — 
white  horse  —  old  man  —  I "  — 


150  GOLIATH 

Suddenly  the  pretty  housemaid  descended 
the  steps  and  picked  up  from  the  graveled 
path  a  little  panting,  tremulous  wad  of 
something  —  not  more  than  two  handfuls 
at  most  —  which  she  folded  tenderly  to  her 
bosom. 

"  What 's  that  ?  "  I  asked. 

"That's  Goliath,"  said  Watson. 


MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 


MRS.  WESLEY  frequently  embarrasses 
me  by  remarking  in  the  presence  of  other 
persons — our  intimate  friends,  of  course — 
"  Wesley,  you  are  not  brilliant,  but  you  are 
good."  " 

From  Mrs.  Wesley's  outlook,  which  is 
that  of  a  very  high  ideal,  there  is  nothing 
uncomplimentary  in  the  remark,  nothing 
so  intended,  but  I  must  confess  that  I  have 
sometimes  felt  as  if  I  were  paying  a  rather 
large  price  for  character.  Yet  when  I  re* 
fleet  on  my  cousin  the  colonel,  and  my  own 
action  in  the  matter,  I  am  ready  with  grati 
tude  to  accept  Mrs.  Wesley's  estimate  of 
me,  for  if  I  am  not  good,  I  am  not  any 
thing.  Perhaps  it  is  an  instance  of  my  lack 
of  brilliancy  that  I  am  willing  to  relate  cer- 


152          MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

tain  facts  which  strongly  tend  to  substan 
tiate  this.  My  purpose,  however,  is  not  to 
prove  either  my  goodness  or  my  dullness, 
but  to  leave  some  record,  even  if  slight  and 
imperfect,  of  my  only  relative.  When  a 
family  is  reduced  like  ours  to  a  single  re 
lative,  it  is  well  to  make  the  most  of  him. 
One  should  celebrate  him  annually,  as  it 
were. 

One  morning  in  the  latter  part  of  May, 
a  few  weeks  after  the  close  of  the  war  of 
the  rebellion,  as  I  was  hurrying  down  Sixth 
Avenue  in  pursuit  of  a  heedless  horse-car, 
I  ran  against  a  young  person  whose  shabbi- 
ness  of  aspect  was  all  that  impressed  itself 
upon  me  in  the  instant  of  collision.  At  a 
second  glance  I  saw  that  this  person  was 
clad  in  the  uniform  of  a  Confederate  soldier 
—  an  officer's  uniform  originally,  for  there 
were  signs  that  certain  insignia  of  rank  had 
been  removed  from  the  cuffs  and  collar  of 
the  thread-bare  coat.  He  wore  a  wide- 
brimmed  felt  hat  of  a  military  fashion,  de 
corated  with  a  tarnished  gilt  cord,  the  two 


MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL  153 

ends  of  which,  terminating  in  acorns,  hung 
down  over  his  nose.  His  butternut  trousers 
were  tucked  into  the  tops  of  a  pair  of  high 
cavalry  boots,  of  such  primitive  workman 
ship  as  to  suggest  the  possibility  that  the 
wearer  had  made  them  himself.  In  fact, 
his  whole  appearance  had  an  impromptu  air 
about  it.  The  young  man  eyed  me  gloom 
ily  for  half  a  minute;  then  a  light  came 
into  his  countenance. 

"Wesley  — Tom  Wesley!"  he  ex 
claimed.  "  Dear  old  boy !  " 

To  be  sure  I  was  Thomas  Wesley,  and, 
under  conceivable  circumstances,  dear  old 
boy ;  but  who  on  earth  was  he  ? 

"  You  don't  know  me  ?  "  he  said,  laying  a 
hand  on  each  of  my  shoulders,  and  leaning 
back  as  he  contemplated  me  with  a  large 
smile  in  anticipatory  enjoyment  of  my  sur 
prise  and  pleasure  when  I  should  come  to 
know  him.  "  I  am  George  W.  Flagg,  and 
long  may  I  wave !  " 

My  cousin  Flagg!  It  was  no  wonder 
that  I  did  not  recognize  him. 

When   the  Flagg  family,  consisting  of 


154  MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

father  and  son,  removed  to  the  South, 
George  was  ten  years  old  and  I  was  thir 
teen.  It  was  twenty  years  since  he  and  I 
had  passed  a  few  weeks  together  on  Grand 
father  Wesley's  farm  in  New  Jersey.  Our 
intimacy  began  and  ended  there,  for  it  had 
not  ripened  into  letters ;  perhaps  because 
we  were  too  young  when  we  parted.  Later 
I  had  had  a  hundred  intermittent  impulses 
to  write  to  him,  but  did  not.  Meanwhile 
separation  and  silence  had  clothed  him  in 
my  mind  with  something  of  the  mistiness  of 
a  half -remembered  dream.  Yet  the  instant 
Washington  Flagg  mentioned  his  name, 
the  boyish  features  began  rapidly  to  define 
themselves  behind  the  maturer  mask,  until 
he  stood  before  me  in  the  crude  form  in 
which  my  memory  had  slyly  embalmed  him. 
Now  my  sense  of  kinship  is  particularly 
strong,  for  reasons  which  I  shall  presently 
touch  upon,  and  I  straightway  grasped  my 
cousin's  hand  with  a  warmth  that  would 
have  seemed  exaggerated  to  a  bystander, 
if  there  had  been  a  bystander ;  but  it  was 
early  in  the  day,  and  the  avenue  had  not 


MY  COUSIN  TEE  COLONEL  155 

yet  awakened  to  life.  As  this  bitter  world 
goes,  a  sleek,  prosperous,  well-dressed  man 
does  not  usually  throw  much  heartiness 
into  his  manner  when  he  is  accosted  on  the 
street  by  so  unpromising  and  dismal  an 
object  as  my  cousin  Washington  Flagg  was 
that  morning.  Not  at  all  in  the  way  of 
sounding  the  trumpet  of  my  own  geniality, 
but  simply  as  the  statement  of  a  fact,  I  will 
say  that  I  threw  a  great  deal  of  heartiness 
into  my  greeting.  This  man  to  me  meant 
Family. 

I  stood  curiously  alone  in  the  world. 
My  father  died  before  I  was  born,  and  my 
mother  shortly  afterwards.  I  had  neither 
brother  nor  sister.  Indeed,  I  never  had 
any  near  relatives  except  a  grandfather 
until  my  sons  came  along.  Mrs.  Wesley, 
when  I  married  her,  was  not  merely  an 
only  child,  but  an  orphan.  Fate  denied 
me  even  a  mother-in-law.  I  had  one  uncle 
and  one  cousin.  The  former  I  do  not  re 
member  ever  to  have  seen,  and  my  associa 
tion  with  the  latter,  as  has  been  stated,  was 
of  a  most  limited  order.  Perhaps  I  should 


156          MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

have  had  less  sentiment  about  family  ties 
if  I  had  had  more  of  them.  As  it  was, 
Washington  Flagg  occupied  the  position 
of  sole  kinsman,  always  excepting  the  little 
Wesleys,  and  I  was  as  glad  to  see  him  that 
May  morning  in  his  poverty  as  if  he  had 
come  to  me  loaded  with  the  title-deeds  of 
those  vast  estates  which  our  ancestors  (I 
wonder  that  I  was  allowed  any  ancestors : 
why  was  n't  I  created  at  once  out  of  some 
stray  scrap  of  protoplasm  ?)  were  supposed 
to  have  held  in  the  colonial  period.  As 
I  gazed  upon  Washington  Flagg  I  thrilled 
with  the  sense  that  I  was  gazing  upon  the 
materialization  in  a  concrete  form  of  all  the 
ghostly  brothers  and  sisters  and  nephews 
and  nieces  which  I  had  never  had. 

"  Dear  old  boy !  "  I  exclaimed,  in  my 
turn,  holding  on  to  his  hand  as  if  I  were 
afraid  that  I  was  going  to  lose  him  again 
for  another  twenty  years.  "  Bless  my  stars ! 
where  did  you  come  from?" 

"From  Dixie's  Land,"  he  said,  with  a 
laugh.  "  'Way  down  in  Dixie." 

In  a  few  words,  and  with  a  picturesque- 


teY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL  157 

ness  of  phrase  in  which  I  noted  a  rich 
Southern  flavor,  he  explained  the  phenom 
enon  of  his  presence  in  New  York.  After 
Lee's  surrender  at  Appomattox  Court 
House,  my  cousin  had  managed  to  reach 
Washington,  where  he  was  fortunate  enough 
to  get  a  free  pass  to  Baltimore.  He  had 
nearly  starved  to  death  in  making  his  way 
out  of  Virginia.  To  quote  his  words,  "  The 
wind  that  is  supposed  to  be  tempered  ex 
pressly  for  shorn  lambs  was  not  blowing 
very  heavily  about  that  time."  At  Balti 
more  he  fell  in  with  a  former  Mobile  ac 
quaintance,  from  whom  he  borrowed  a  sum 
sufficient  to  pay  the  fare  to  New  York  — 
a  humiliating  necessity,  as  my  cousin  re 
marked,  for  a  man  who  had  been  a  colonel 
in  Stonewall  Jackson's  brigade.  Flagg  had 
reached  the  city  before  daybreak,  and  had 
wandered  for  hours  along  the  water-front, 
waiting  for  some  place  to  open,  in  order 
that  he  might  look  up  my  address  in  the 
Directory,  if  I  were  still  in  the  land  of  the 
living.  He  had  had  what  he  described  as 
an  antediluvian  sandwich  the  previous  day 


158  MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

at  two  o'clock,  since  which  banquet  no  food 
had  passed  his  lips. 

"  And  I  '11  be  hanged,"  he  said,  "  if  the 
first  shop  that  took  down  its  shutters 
was  n't  a  restaurant,  with  a  cursed  rib  of 
roast  beef,  flanked  with  celery,  and  a  ham 
in  curl-papers  staring  at  me  through  the 
window-pane.  A  little  tin  sign,  with  '  Meals 
at  All  Hours'  painted  on  it  —  what  did 
they  want  to  go  and  do  that  for  ?  —  knocked 
the  breath  clean  out  of  me.  I  gave  one 
look,  and  ploughed  up  the  street,  for  if  I 
had  stayed  fifteen  seconds  longer  in  front 
of  that  plate-glass,  I  reckon  I  would  have 
burst  it  in.  Well,  I  put  distance  between 
me  and  temptation,  and  by  and  by  I  came 
to  a  newspaper  office,  where  I  cornered  a 
Directory.  I  was  on  the  way  to  your  house 
when  we  collided ;  and  now,  Tom  Wesley, 
for  heaven's  sake  introduce  me  to  some 
thing  to  eat.  There  is  no  false  pride  about 
me;  I  'd  shake  hands  with  a  bone." 

The  moisture  was  ready  to  gather  in  my 
eyes,  and  for  a  second  or  two  I  was  unable 
to  manage  my  voice.  Here  was  my  only 


MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL  159 

kinsman  on  the  verge  of  collapse  —  one 
miserable  sandwich,  like  a  thin  plank,  be 
tween  him  and  destruction.  My  own  plen 
teous  though  hasty  morning  meal  turned 
into  reproachful  lead  within  me. 

"  Dear  old  boy !  "  I  cried  again.  "  Come 
along !  I  can  see  that  you  are  nearly  fam 
ished." 

"  I  've  a  right  smart  appetite,  Thomas, 
there 's  no  mistake  about  that.  If  appetite 
were  assets,  I  could  invite  a  whole  regiment 
to  rations." 

I  had  thrust  my  hand  under  his  arm,  and 
was  dragging  him  towards  a  small  oyster 
shop,  whose  red  balloon  in  a  side  street  had 
caught  my  eye,  when  I  suddenly  remem 
bered  that  it  was  imperative  on  me  to  be  at 
the  office  at  eight  o'clock  that  morning,  in 
order  to  prepare  certain  papers  wanted  by 
the  president  of  the  board,  previous  to  a 
meeting  of  the  directors.  (I  was  at  that 
time  under-secretary  of  the  Savonarola  Fire 
Insurance  Company.)  The  recollection  of 
the  business  which  had  caused  me  to  be  on 
foot  at  this  unusual  hour  brought  me  to  a 


160          MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

dead  halt.  I  dropped  my  cousin's  arm,  and 
stood  looking  at  him  helplessly.  It  seemed 
so  inhospitable,  not  to  say  cold-blooded,  to 
send  him  off  to  get  his  breakfast  alone. 
Flagg  misinterpreted  my  embarrassment. 

"  Of  course,"  he  said,  with  a  touch  of 
dignity  which  pierced  me  through  the 
bosom,  "  I  do  not  wish  to  be  taken  to  any 
place  where  I  would  disgrace  you.  I  know 
how  impossible  I  am.  Yet  this  suit  of 
clothes  cost  me  twelve  hundred  dollars  in 
Confederate  scrip.  These  boots  are  not 
much  to  look  at,  but  they  were  made  by  a 
scion  of  one  of  the  first  families  of  the 
South ;  I  paid  him  two  hundred  dollars  for 
them,  and  he  was  right  glad  to  get  it.  To 
such  miserable  straits  have  Southern  gen 
tlemen  been  reduced  by  the  vandals  of  the 
North.  Perhaps  you  don't  like  the  Con 
federate  gray  ?  " 

"  Bother  your  boots  and  your  clothes !  " 
I  cried.  "  Nobody  will  notice  them  here.'* 
(Which  was  true  enough,  for  in  those 
days  the  land  was  strewed  with  shreds  and 
patches  of  the  war.  The  drivers  and  con- 


MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL  161 

ductors  of  street  cars  wore  overcoats  made 
out  of  shoddy  army  blankets,  and  the  dust 
men  went  about  in  cast-off  infantry  caps.) 
"  What  troubles  me  is  that  I  can't  wait  to 
start  you  on  your  breakfast." 

"  I  reckon  I  don't  need  much  starting." 

I  explained  the  situation  to  him,  and  sug 
gested  that  instead  of  going  to  the  restau 
rant,  he  should  go  directly  to  my  house,  and 
be  served  by  Mrs.  "Wesley,  to  whom  I  would 
write  a  line  on  a  leaf  of  my  memorandum- 
book.  I  did  not  suggest  this  step  in  the 
first  instance  because  the  little  oyster  saloon, 
close  at  hand,  had  seemed  to  offer  the  short 
est  cut  to  my  cousin's  relief. 

"  So  you  're  married  ?  "  said  he. 

"Yes— and  you?" 

"  I  have  n't  taken  any  matrimony  in 
mine." 

"  I  've  been  married  six  years,  and  have 
two  boys." 

"No!  How  far  is  your  house?"  he 
inquired.  "  Will  I  have  to  take  a  caar  ?  " 

"A  'caar'?  Ah,  yes  —  that  is  to  say, 
no.  A  car  is  n't  worth  while.  You  see  that 


162          MY  COUSIN  TEE  COLONEL 

bakery  two  blocks  from  here,  at  the  right  ? 
That's  on  the  corner  of  Clinton  Place. 
You  turn  down  there.  You'll  notice  in 
looking  over  what  I  've  written  to  Mrs. 
Wesley  that  she  is  to  furnish  you  with 
some  clothes,  such  as  are  worn  by  —  by 
vandals  of  the  North  in  comfortable  circum 
stances." 

"Tom  Wesley,  you  are  as  good  as  a 
straight  flush.  If  you  ever  come  down 
South,  when  this  cruel  war  is  over,  our  peo 
ple  will  treat  you  like  one  of  the  crowned 
heads  —  only  a  devilish  sight  better,  for  the 
crowned  heads  rather  went  back  on  us.  If 
England  had  recognized  the  Southern  Con 
federacy  "  — 

"  Never  mind  that ;  your  tenderloin  steak 
is  cooling." 

"  Don't  mention  it !  I  go.  But  I  say, 
Tom  —  Mrs.  Wesley  ?  Really,  I  am 
hardly  presentable.  Are  there  other  ladies 
around  ?  " 

"  There  's  no  one  but  Mrs.  Wesley." 

"  Do  you  think  I  can  count  on  her  being 
glad  to  see  me  at  such  short  notice  ?  " 


M7  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL  163 

"She  will  be  a  sister  to  you,"  I  said 
Wurmly. 

"  Well,  I  reckon  that  you  two  are  a  pair 
of  trumps.  Au  revoir  !  Be  good  to  your 
self." 

With  this,  my  cousin  strode  off,  tucking 
my  note  to  Mrs.  Wesley  inside  the  leather 
belt  buckled  tightly  around  his  waist.  I 
lingered  a  moment  on  the  curbstone,  and 
looked  after  him  with  a  sensation  of  min 
gled  pride,  amusement,  and  curiosity.  That 
was  my  Family ;  there  it  was,  in  that  broad 
back  and  those  not  ungraceful  legs,  strid 
ing  up  Sixth  Avenue,  with  its  noble  intel 
lect  intent  on  thoughts  of  breakfast.  I  was 
thankful  that  it  had  not  been  written  in  the 
book  of  fate  that  this  limb  of  the  closely 
pruned  Wesley  tree  should  be  lopped  off 
by  the  sword  of  war.  But  as  Washington 
Flagg  turned  into  Clinton  Place,  I  had  a 
misgiving.  It  was  hardly  to  be  expected 
that  a  person  of  his  temperament,  fresh 
from  a  four  years'  desperate  struggle  and 
a  disastrous  defeat,  would  refrain  from  ex 
pressing  his  views  on  the  subject.  That 


164          MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

those  views  would  be  somewhat  lurid,  I  was 
convinced  by  the  phrases  which  he  had 
dropped  here  and  there  in  the  course  of 
our  conversation.  He  was,  to  all  intents 
and  purposes,  a  Southerner.  He  had  been 
a  colonel  in  Stonewall  Jackson's  brigade. 
And  Mrs.  Wesley  was  such  an  uncom 
promising  patriot !  It  was  in  the  blood. 
Her  great-grandfather,  on  the  mother's 
side,  had  frozen  to  death  at  Valley  Forge 
in  the  winter  of  1778,  and  her  grandfather, 
on  the  paternal  side,  had  had  his  head 
taken  off  by  a  round-shot  from  his  Maj 
esty's  sloop  of  war  Porpoise  in  1812.  I  be 
lieve  that  Mrs.  Wesley  would  have  applied 
for  a  divorce  from  me  if  I  had  not  served 
a  year  in  the  army  at  the  beginning  of  the 
war. 

I  began  bitterly  to  regret  that  I  had 
been  obliged  to  present  my  cousin  to  her 
so  abruptly.  I  wished  it  had  occurred  to 
me  to  give  him  a  word  or  two  of  caution, 
or  that  I  had  had  sense  enough  to  adhere 
to  my  first  plan  of  letting  him  feed  himself 
at  the  little  oyster  establishment  round  the 


M7  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL  165 

corner.  But  wishes  and  regrets  could  not 
now  mend  the  matter ;  so  I  hailed  an  ap 
proaching  horse-car,  and  comforted  myself 
on  the  rear  platform  with  the  reflection  that 
perhaps  the  colonel  would  not  wave  the 
palmetto  leaf  too  vigorously,  if  he  waved  it 
at  all,  in  the  face  of  Mrs.  Wesley. 


n 

THE  awkwardness  of  the  situation  dis 
turbed  me  more  or  less  during  the  fore 
noon  ;  but  fortunately  it  was  a  half -holiday, 
and  I  was  able  to  leave  the  office  shortly 
after  one  o'clock. 

I  do  not  know  how  I  came  to  work  my 
self  into  such  a  state  of  mind  on  the  way 
up  town,  but  as  I  stepped  from  the  horse- 
car  and  turned  into  Clinton  Place  I  had  a 
strong  apprehension  that  I  should  find  some 
unpleasant  change  in  the  facial  aspect  of 
the  little  red  brick  building  I  occupied  —  a 
scowl,  for  instance,  on  the  brown-stone  eye 
brow  over  the  front  door.  I  actually  had  a 
feeling  of  relief  when  I  saw  that  the  facade 
presented  its  usual  unaggressive  appearance. 

As  I  entered  the  hall,  Mrs.  Wesley,  who 
had  heard  my  pass-key  grating  in  the  lock, 
was  coming  downstairs. 

"  Is  my  cousin  here,  Clara  ? "  I  asked, 


MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL          167 

in  the  act  of  reaching  up  to  hang  my  hat 
on  the  rack. 

"  No,"  said  Mrs.  Wesley.  There  was  a 
tone  in  that  monosyllable  that  struck  me. 

"  But  he  has  been  here  ?  " 

"  He  has  been  here,"  replied  Mrs.  Wes 
ley.  "Maybe  you  noticed  the  bell-knob 
hanging  out  one  or  two  inches.  Is  Mr. 
Flagg  in  the  habit  of  stretching  the  bell- 
wire  of  the  houses  he  visits,  when  the  door 
is  not  opened  in  a  moment?  Has  he 
escaped  from  somewhere  ?  " 

" '  Escaped  from  somewhere ! '  "  I  echoed. 

"  I  only  asked  ;  he  behaved  so  strangely." 

"Good  heavens,  Clara!  what  has  the 
man  done  ?  I  hope  that  nothing  unpleasant 
has  happened.  Flagg  is  my  only  surviving 
relative  —  I  may  say  our  only  surviving 
relative  —  and  I  should  be  pained  to  have 
any  misunderstanding.  I  want  you  to  like 
him." 

"  There  was  a  slight  misunderstanding  at 
first,"  said  Clara,  and  a  smile  flitted  across 
her  face,  softening  the  features  which 
had  worn  an  air  of  unusual  seriousness 


168          MY  COUSIN  THE   COLONEL 

and  preoccupation.  "But  it  is  all  right 
now,  dear.  He  has  eaten  everything  in  the 
house,  the  bit  of  spring  lamb  I  saved  ex 
pressly  for  you ;  and  has  gone  down  town 
'on  a  raid,'  as  he  called  it,  in  your  sec 
ond-best  suit  —  the  checked  tweed.  I  did 
all  I  could  for  him." 

"  My  dear,  something  has  ruffled  you. 
What  is  it?" 

"  Wesley,"  said  my  wife  slowly,  and  in 
a  perplexed  way,  "  I  have  had  so  few  rela 
tives  that  perhaps  I  don't  know  what  to  do 
with  them,  or  what  to  say  to  them." 

"  You  always  say  and  do  what  is  just 
right." 

"  I  began  unfortunately  with  Mr.  Flagg, 
then.  Mary  was  washing  the  dishes  when 
he  rang,  and  I  went  to  the  door.  If  he  is 
our  cousin,  I  must  say  that  he  cut  a  re 
markable  figure  on  the  door-step." 

"  I  can  imagine  it,  my  dear,  coming  upon 
you  so  unexpectedly.  There  were  peculi 
arities  in  his  costume." 

"For  an  instant,"  Clara  went  on,  "I 
took  him  for  the  ashman,  though  the  ash- 


MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL  169 

man  always  goes  to  the  area  door,  and 
never  comes  on  Tuesdays ;  and  then,  before 
the  creature  had  a  chance  to  speak,  I  said, 
'  We  don't  want  any/  supposing  he  had 
something  to  sell.  Instead  of  going  away 
quietly,  as  I  expected  him  to  do,  the  man 
made  a  motion  to  come  in,  and  I  slammed 
the  door  on  him." 

"Dear!  dear!" 

"  What  else  could  I  do,  all  alone  in  the 
hall  ?  How  was  I  to  know  that  he  was 
one  of  the  family  ?  " 

"  What  happened  next  ?  " 

"  Well,  I  saw  that  I  had  shut  the  lapel 
of  his  coat  in  the  door-jamb,  and  that  the 
man  could  n't  go  away  if  he  wanted  to  ever 
so  much.  Was  n't  it  dreadful  ?  Of  course 
I  did  n't  dare  to  open  the  door,  and  there 
he  was  !  He  began  pounding  on  the  pan 
els  and  ringing  the  bell  in  a  manner  to 
curdle  one's  blflbd.  He  rang  the  bell  at 
least  a  hundred  times  in  succession.  I 
stood  there  with  my  hand  on  the  bolt,  not 
daring  to  move  or  breathe.  I  called  to 
Mary  to  put  on  her  things,  steal  out  the 


170          MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

lower  way,  and  bring  the  police.  Sud 
denly  everything  was  still  outside,  and 
presently  I  saw  a  piece  of  paper  slowly 
slipping  in  over  the  threshold,  oh,  so  slyly ! 
I  felt  my  hands  and  feet  grow  cold.  I  felt 
that  the  man  himself  was  about  to  follow 
that  narrow  strip  of  paper;  that  he  was 
bound  to  get  in  that  way,  or  through  the 
key-hole,  or  somehow.  Then  I  recognized 
your  handwriting.  My  first  thought  was 
that  you  had  been  killed  in  some  horrible 
accident"  — 

"  And  had  dropped  you  a  line  ?  " 

"  I  did  n't  reason  about  it,  Wesley ;  I 
•was  paralyzed.  I  picked  up  the  paper,  and 
read  it,  and  opened  the  door,  and  Mr. 
Flagg  rushed  in  as  if  he  had  been  shot 
out  of  something.  *  Don't  want  any  ? '  he 
shouted.  '  But  I  do !  I  want  some  break 
fast  ! '  You  should  have  heard  him." 

"  He  stated  a  fact,  at*  any  rate.  Of 
course  he  might  have  stated  it  less  viva 
ciously."  I  was  beginning  to  be  amused. 

"  After  that  he  was  quieter,  and  tried  to 
make  himself  agreeable,  and  we  laughed  a 


MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL  171 

little  together  over  my  mistake  —  that  is, 
he  laughed.  Of  course  I  got  breakfast  for 
him  —  and  such  a  breakfast !  " 

"  He  had  been  without  anything  to  eat 
since  yesterday." 

"I  should  have  imagined,"  said  Clara, 
"  that  he  had  eaten  nothing  since  the  war 
broke  out." 

"  Did  he  say  anything  in  particular  about 
himself  ?  "  I  asked,  with  a  recurrent  touch 
of  anxiety. 

"  He  was  n't  particular  what  he  said 
about  himself.  Without  in  the  least  see 
ing  the  horror  of  it,  he  positively  boasted 
of  having  been  in  the  rebel  army." 

"  Yes  —  a  colonel." 

"That  makes  it  all  the  worse,"  replied 
Clara. 

"  But  they  had  to  have  colonels,  you 
know." 

"  Is  Mr.  Flagg  a  Virginian,  or  a  Missis- 
sippian,  or  a  Georgian  ?  " 

"  No,  my  dear  ;  he  was  born  in  the  State 
of  Maine ;  but  he  has  lived  so  long  in  the 
South  that  he  's  quite  one  of  them  for  the 


172  MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

present.  We  must  make  allowances  for 
him,  Clara.  Did  he  say  anything  else  ?  " 

"  Oh  yes." 

"  What  did  he  say  ?  " 

"  He  said  he  'd  come  back  to  supper." 

It  was  clear  that  Clara  was  not  favorably 
impressed  by  my  cousin,  and,  indeed,  the 
circumstances  attending  his  advent  were 
not  happy.  It  was  likewise  clear  that  I 
had  him  on  my  hands,  temporarily  at  least. 
I  almost  reproach  myself  even  now  for  say 
ing  "  on  my  hands,"  in  connection  with  my 
own  flesh  and  blood.  The  responsibility 
did  not  so  define  itself  at  the  time.  It 
took  the  form  of  a  novel  and  pleasing  duty. 
Here  was  my  only  kinsman,  in  a  strange 
city,  without  friends,  money,  or  hopeful 
outlook.  My  course  lay  before  me  as 
straight  as  a  turnpike.  I  had  a  great  deal 
of  family  pride,  even  if  I  did  not  have  any 
family  to  speak  of,  and  I  was  resolved  that 
what  little  I  had  should  not  perish  for  want 
of  proper  sustenance. 

Shortly  before  six  o'clock  Washington 
Flagg  again  presented  himself  at  our  door- 


MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL  173 

step,  and  obtained  admission  to  the  house 
with  fewer  difficulties  than  he  had  encoun 
tered  earlier  in  the  day. 

I  do  not  think  I  ever  saw  a  man  in  des 
titute  circumstances  so  entirely  cheerful  as 
my  cousin  was.  Neither  the  immediate 
past,  which  must  have  been  full  of  hard 
ships,  nor  the  immediate  future,  which  was 
not  lavish  of  its  promises,  seemed  to  give 
him  any  but  a  momentary  and  impersonal 
concern.  At  the  supper  table  he  talked 
much  and  well,  exceedingly  well,  I  thought, 
except  when  he  touched  on  the  war,  which 
he  was  continually  doing,  and  then  I  was 
on  tenter-hooks.  His  point  of  view  was  so 
opposed  to  ours  as  to  threaten  in  several  in 
stances  to  bring  on  an  engagement  all  along 
the  line.  This  calamity  was  averted  by  my 
passing  something  to  him  at  the  critical 
moment.  Now  I  checked  his  advance  by  a 
slice  of  cold  tongue,  and  now  I  turned  his 
flank  with  another  cup  of  tea ;  but  I  ques 
tioned  my  ability  to  preserve  peace  through 
out  the  evening.  Before  the  meal  was  at 
an  end  there  had  crept  into  Clara's  manner 


174  MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

a  polite  calmness  which  I  never  like  to  see. 
What  was  I  going  to  do  with  these  two 
after  supper,  when  my  cousin  Flagg,  with 
his  mind  undistracted  by  relays  of  cream 
toast,  could  give  his  entire  attention  to  the 
Lost  Cause? 

As  we  were  pushing  the  chairs  back  from 
the  table,  I  was  inspired  with  the  idea  of 
taking  our  guest  off  to  a  cafe  concert  over 
in  the  Bowery  —  a  volksgarten  very  popular 
in  those  days.  While  my  whispered  sug 
gestion  was  meeting  Clara's  cordial  ap 
proval,  our  friend  Bleeker  dropped  in.  So 
the  colonel  and  Bleeker  and  I  passed  the 
evening  with  "  lager-beer  and  Meyerbeer," 
as  my  lively  kinsman  put  it ;  after  which  he 
spent  the  night  on  the  sofa  in  our  sitting- 
room,  for  we  had  no  spare  chamber  to  place 
at  his  disposal. 

"I  shall  be  very  snug  here,"  he  said, 
smiling  down  my  apologies.  "  I  'm  a  'pos 
sum  for  adapting  myself  to  any  odd  hol 
low." 

The  next  morning  my  cousin  was  early 
astir,  possibly  not  having  found  that  narrow 


MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL  175 

springless  lounge  all  a  'possum  could  wish, 
and  joined  us  in  discussing  a  plan  which 
I  had  proposed  overnight  to  Mrs.  Wesley, 
namely,  that  he  should  hire  an  apartment  in 
a  quiet  street  near  by,  and  take  his  meals  — 
that  was  to  say,  his  dinner  —  with  us,  until 
he  could  make  such  arrangements  as  would 
allow  him  to  live  more  conveniently.  To 
return  South,  where  all  the  lines  of  his  pre 
vious  business  connections  were  presumably 
broken,  was  at  present  out  of  the  question. 

"The  war  has  ruined  our  people,"  said 
the  colonel.  "  I  will  have  to  put  up  for  a 
while  with  a  place  in  a  bank  or  an  insur 
ance  office,  or  something  in  that  small  way. 
The  world  owes  me  a  living,  North  or 
South." 

His  remark  nettled  me  a  little,  though 
he  was,  of  course,  unaware  of  my  relations 
with  the  Savonarola  Fire  Insurance  Com 
pany,  and  had  meant  no  slight. 

"  I  don't  quite  see  that,"  I  observed. 

"Don't  see  what?" 

"  How  the  world  contrived  to  get  so 
deeply  into  your  debt  —  how  all  the  points 
of  the  compass  managed  it." 


176          MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

"  Thomas,  I  did  n't  ask  to  be  born,  did 
I?" 

"  Probably  not." 

"  But  I  was  born,  was  n't  I  ?  " 

"  To  all  appearances." 

"Well,  then!" 

"  But  you  cannot  hold  the  world  in 
general  responsible  for  your  birth.  The 
responsibility  narrows  itself  down  to  your 
parents." 

"  Then  I  am  euchred.  By  one  of  those 
laws  of  nature  which  make  this  globe  a 
sweet  spot  to  live  on,  they  were  taken  from 
me  just  when  I  needed  them  most  —  my 
mother  in  my  infancy,  and  my  father  in 
my  childhood." 

"  But  your  father  left  you  something  ?  " 

"  The  old  gentleman  left  me  nothing,  and 
I  've  been  steadily  increasing  the  legacy 
ever  since." 

"  What  did  you  do  before  the  war  ?  "  in 
quired  Clara  sympathetically.  His  mention 
of  his  early  losses  had  touched  her. 

"Oh,  a  number  of  things.  I  read  law 
for  a  while.  At  one  time  I  was  interested 


MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL  177 

in  a  large  concern  for  the  manufacture  of 
patent  metallic  burial  cases;  but  nobody 
seemed  to  die  that  year.  Good  health 
raged  like  an  epidemic  all  over  the  South. 
Latterly  I  dabbled  a  little  in  stocks  —  and 
stocks  dabbled  in  me." 

"  You  were  not  successful,  then  ?  "  I  said. 

"  I  was  at  first,  but  when  the  war  fever 
broke  out  and  the  Southern  heart  was  fired, 
everything  that  did  n't  go  down  went  up." 

"  And  you  could  n't  meet  your  obliga 
tions?" 

"  That  was  n't  the  trouble  —  I  could  n't 
get  away  from  them,"  replied  the  colonel, 
with  a  winsome  smile.  "I  met  them  at 
every  corner." 

The  man  had  a  fashion  of  turning  his 
very  misfortunes  into  pleasantries.  Surely 
prosperity  would  be  wasted  on  a  person  so 
gifted  with  optimism.  I  felt  it  to  be  kind 
and  proper,  however,  to  express  the  hope 
that  he  had  reached  the  end  of  his  adver 
sity,  and  to  assure  him  that  I  would  do 
anything  I  could  in  the  world  to  help  him. 

"  Tom  Wesley,  I  believe  you  would." 


178          MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

Before  the  close  of  that  day  Mrs.  "Wesley, 
who  is  a  lady  that  does  not  allow  any  spe 
cies  of  vegetation  to  accumulate  under  her 
feet,  had  secured  a  furnished  room  for  our 
kinsman  in  a  street  branching  off  from 
Clinton  Place,  and  at  a  moderate  additional 
expense  contracted  to  have  him  served  with 
breakfasts  on  the  premises.  Previous  to 
this  I  had  dined  down  town,  returning 
home  in  the  evening  to  a  rather  heavy  tea, 
which  was  really  my  wife's  dinner  —  Sher 
idan  and  Ulysses  (such  were  the  heroic 
names  under  which  the  two  little  Wesleys 
were  staggering)  had  their  principal  meal 
at  midday.  It  was,  of  course,  not  desirable 
that  the  colonel  should  share  this  meal  with 
them  and  Mrs.  Wesley  in  my  absence.  So 
we  decided  to  have  a  six-o'clock  dinner ;  a 
temporary  disarrangement  of  our  domestic 
machinery,  for  my  cousin  Flagg  would 
doubtless  find  some  acceptable  employment 
before  long,  and  leave  the  household  free  to 
slip  back  into  its  regular  grooves. 

An  outline  of  the  physical  aspects  of  the 
exotic  kinsman  who  had  so  unexpectedly 


MY  COUSIN  TEE  COLONEL  179 

added  himself  to  the  figures  at  our  happy 
fireside  seems  not  out  of  place  here.  The 
portrait,  being  the  result  of  many  sittings, 
does  not  in  some  points  convey  the  exact 
impression  he  made  upon  us  in  the  earlier 
moments  of  our  intimacy ;  but  that  is  not 
important. 

Though  Washington  Flagg  had  first 
opened  his  eyes  on  the  banks  of  the  Penob- 
scot,  he  appeared  to  have  been  planned  by 
nature  to  adorn  the  banks  of  the  Rappa- 
hannock.  There  was  nothing  of  the  New- 
Englander  about  him.  The  sallowness  of 
his  complexion  and  the  blackness  of  his 
straight  hair,  which  he  wore  long,  were 
those  of  the  typical  Southerner.  He  was 
of  medium  height  and  loosely  built,  with  a 
kind  of  elastic  grace  in  his  disjointedness. 
When  he  smiled  he  was  positively  hand 
some  ;  in  repose  his  features  were  nearly 
plain,  the  lips  too  indecisive,  and  the  eyes 
lacking  in  lustre.  A  sparse  tuft  of  beard 
at  his  chin — he  was  otherwise  smoothly 
shaven  —  lengthened  the  face.  There  was, 
when  he  willed  it,  something  very  ingratiat- 


180          MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

ing  in  his  manner  —  even  Clara  admitted 
that  —  a  courteous  and  unconventional  sort 
of  ease.  In  all  these  surface  characteristics 
he  was  a  geographical  anomaly.  In  the 
cast  of  his  mind  he  was  more  Southern  than 
the  South,  as  a  Northern  convert  is  apt  to 
be.  Even  his  speech,  like  the  dyer's  arm, 
had  taken  tints  from  his  environment.  One 
might  say  that  his  pronunciation  had  lit 
erally  been  colored  by  his  long  association 
with  the  colored  race.  He  invariably  said 
fl<?  for  floor,  and  djew  for  dew ;  but  I  do 
not  anywhere  attempt  a  phonetic  reproduc 
tion  of  his  dialect ;  in  its  finer  qualities  it 
was  too  elusive  to  be  snared  in  a  network 
of  letters.  In  spite  of  his  displacements, 
for  my  cousin  had  lived  all  over  the  South 
in  his  boyhood,  he  had  contrived  to  pick  up 
a  very  decent  education.  As  to  his  other 
attributes,  he  shall  be  left  to  reveal  them 
himself. 


in 

MBS.  WESLEY  kindly  assumed  the  charge 
of  establishing  Washington  Flagg  in  his 
headquarters,  as  he  termed  the  snug  hall 
bedroom  in  Macdougal  Street.  There  were 
numberless  details  to  be  looked  to.  His 
wardrobe,  among  the  rest,  needed  replenish 
ing  down  to  the  most  unconsidered  button, 
for  Flagg  had  dropped  into  our  little  world 
with  as  few  impedimenta  as  if  he  had  been 
a  newly  born  infant.  Though  my  condition, 
like  that  desired  by  Agur,  the  son  of  Jakeh, 
was  one  of  neither  poverty  nor  riches, 
greenbacks  in  those  days  were  greenbacks. 
I  mention  the  fact  in  order  to  say  that  my 
satisfaction  in  coming  to  the  rescue  of  my 
kinsman  would  have  been  greatly  lessened 
if  it  had  involved  no  self-denial  whatever. 

The  day  following  his  installation  I  was 
partly  annoyed,  partly  amused,  to  find  that 
Flagg  had  purchased  a  rather  expensive 


182          MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

meerschaum  pipe  and  a  pound  or  two  of 
Latakia  tobacco. 

"  I  cannot  afford  to  smoke  cigars,"  he  ex 
plained.  "  I  must  economize  until  I  get  on 
my  feet." 

Perhaps  it  would  have  been  wiser  if  1 
had  personally  attended  to  his  expenditures, 
minor  as  well  as  major,  but  it  did  not  seem 
practicable  to  leave  him  without  a  cent  in 
his  pocket.  His  pilgrimage  down  town  that 
forenoon  had  apparently  had  no  purpose 
beyond  this  purchase,  though  on  the  pre 
vious  evening  I  had  directed  his  notice  to 
two  or  three  commercial  advertisements 
which  impressed  me  as  worth  looking  into. 
I  hesitated  to  ask  him  if  he  had  looked  into 
them.  A  collateral  feeling  of  delicacy  pre 
vented  me  from  breathing  a  word  to  Clara 
about  the  pipe. 

Our  reconstructed  household,  with  its  un 
reconstructed  member,  now  moved  forward 
on  the  lines  laid  down.  Punctually  at  a 
quarter  to  six  P.  M.  my  cousin  appeared  at 
the  front  door,  hung  his  hat  on  the  rack, 
and  passed  into  the  sitting-room,  sometimes 


MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL  183 

humming  in  the  hall  a  bar  or  two  of  "  The 
Bonny  Blue  Flag  that  bears  a  Single  Star," 
to  the  infinite  distaste  of  Mrs.  Wesley,  who 
was  usually  at  that  moment  giving  the 
finishing  touches  to  the  dinner  table.  After 
dinner,  during  which  I  was  in  a  state  of 
unrelaxed  anxiety  lest  the  colonel  should 
get  himself  on  too  delicate  ground,  I  took 
him  into  my  small  snuggery  at  the  foot  of 
the  hall,  where  coffee  was  served  to  us,  Mrs. 
Wesley  being  left  to  her  own  devices. 

For  several  days  everything  went  smooth 
ly,  beyond  my  hope.  I  found  it  so  easy, 
when  desirable,  to  switch  the  colonel  on  to 
one  of  my  carefully  contrived  side  tracks 
that  I  began  to  be  proud  of  my  skill  and  to 
enjoy  the  exercise  of  it.  But  one  evening, 
just  as  we  were  in  the  middle  of  the  dessert, 
he  suddenly  broke  out  with,  "  We  were  con 
quered  by  mere  brute  force,  you  know !  " 

"  That  is  very  true,"  I  replied.  "  It  is 
brute  force  that  tells  in  war.  Was  n't  it 
Napoleon  who  said  that  he  had  remarked 
that  God  was  generally  on  the  side  which 
had  the  heaviest  artillery  ?  " 


184          MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

"  The  North  had  that,  fast  enough,  and 
crushed  a  free  people  with  it." 

"A  free  people  with  four  millions  of 
slaves  ?  "  observed  Mrs.  Wesley  quietly. 

"Slavery  was  a  patriarchal  institution, 
my  dear  lady.  But  I  reckon  it  is  exploded 
now.  The  Emancipation  Proclamation  was 
a  dastardly  war  measure." 

"  It  did  something  more  and  better  than 
free  the  blacks,"  said  Mrs.  Wesley;  "it 
freed  the  whites.  Dear  me ! "  she  added, 
glancing  at  Sheridan  and  Ulysses,  who,  in 
a  brief  reprieve  from  bed,  were  over  in 
one  corner  of  the  room  dissecting  a  small 
wooden  camel,  "I  cannot  be  thankful 
enough  that  the  children  are  too  young  to 
understand  such  sentiments." 

The  colonel,  to  my  great  relief,  remained 
silent ;  but  as  soon  as  Clara  had  closed  the 
dining-room  door  behind  her,  he  said, 
"  Tom  Wesley,  I  reckon  your  wife  does  n't 
wholly  like  me." 

"  She  likes  you  immensely,"  I  cried,  in 
wardly  begging  to  be  forgiven.  "  But  she  is 
a  firm  believer  in  the  justice  of  the  North 
ern  cause." 


MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL  185 

"Maybe  she  lost  a  brother,  or  some 
thing." 

"No;  she  never  had  a  brother.  If  she 
had  had  one,  he  would  have  been  killed  in 
the  first  battle  of  the  war.  She  sent  me  to 
the  front  to  be  killed,  and  I  went  willingly; 
but  I  was  n't  good  enough ;  the  enemy 
would  n't  have  me  at  any  price  after 
a  year's  trial.  Mrs.  Wesley  feels  very 
strongly  on  this  subject,  and  I  wish  you 
would  try,  like  a  good  fellow,  not  to  bring 
the  question  up  at  dinner-time.  I  am 
squarely  opposed  to  your  views  myself, 
but  I  don't  mind  what  you  say  as  she  does. 
So  talk  to  me  as  much  as  you  want  to,  but 
don't  talk  in  Clara's  presence.  When  per 
sons  disagree  as  you  two  do,  argument  is 
useless.  Besides,  the  whole  thing  has  been 
settled  on  the  battle-field,  and  it  is  n't  worth 
while  to  fight  it  all  over  again  on  a  table 
cloth." 

"  I  suppose  it  is  n't,"  he  assented  good- 
naturedly.  "But  you  people  up  at  the 
North  here  don't  suspicion  what  we  have 
been  through.  You  caught  only  the  edge 


186          MY  COUSIN  THE   COLONEL 

of  the  hurricane.  The  most  of  you,  1  take 
it,  weren't  in  it  at  all." 

"  Our  dearest  were  in  it." 

"  Well,  we  got  whipped,  Wesley,  I  ac 
knowledge  it;  but  we  deserved  to  win,  if 
ever  bravery  deserved  it." 

"The  South  was  brave,  nobody  contests 
that ;  but  '  't  is  not  enough  to  be  brave '  — 

'  The  angry  valor  dashed 
On  the  awful  shield  of  God,' 

as  one  of  our  poets  says." 

"  Blast  one  of  your  poets !  Our  people 
were  right,  too." 

"  Come,  now,  Flagg,  when  you  talk  about 
your  people,  you  ought  to  mean  Northern 
ers,  for  you  were  born  in  the  North." 

"  That  was  just  the  kind  of  luck  that  has 
followed  me  all  my  life.  My  body  belongs 
to  Bangor,  Maine,  and  my  soul  to  Charles 
ton,  South  Carolina." 

"  You  've  got  a  problem  there  that  ought 
to  bother  you." 

"  It  does,"  said  the  colonel,  with  a  laugh. 

"  Meanwhile,  my  dear  boy,  don't  distress 
Mrs.  Wesley  with  it.  She  is  ready  to  be 


MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL  187 

very  fond  of  you,  if  you  will  let  her.  It 
would  be  altogether  sad  and  shameful  if  a 
family  so  contracted  as  ours  could  n't  get 
along  without  internal  dissensions." 

My  cousin  instantly  professed  the  great 
est  regard  for  Mrs.  Wesley,  and  declared 
that  both  of  us  were  good  enough  to  be 
Southrons.  He  promised  that  in  future  he 
would  take  all  the  care  he  could  not  to  run 
against  her  prejudices,  which  merely  grew 
out  of  her  confused  conception  of  State 
rights  and  the  right  of  self-government. 
Women  never  understood  anything  about 
political  economy  and  government,  anyhow. 

Having  accomplished  thus  much  with  the 
colonel,  I  turned  my  attention,  on  his  de 
parture,  to  smoothing  Clara.  I  reminded 
her  that  nearly  everybody  North  and  South 
had  kinsmen  or  friends  in  both  armies.  To 
be  sure,  it  was  unfortunate  that  we,  having 
only  one  kinsman,  should  have  had  him  on 
the  wrong  side.  That  was  better  than  hav 
ing  no  kinsman  at  all.  (Clara  was  inclined 
to  demur  at  this.)  It  had  not  been  practi 
cable  for  him  to  divide  himself ;  if  it  had 


188          MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

been,  he  would  probably  have  done  it,  and 
the  two  halves  would  doubtless  have  arrayed 
themselves  against  each  other.  They  would, 
in  a  manner,  Lave  been  bound  to  do  so. 
However,  the  war  was  over,  we  were  vic 
torious,  and  could  afford  to  be  magnan 
imous. 

"  But  he  does  n't  seem  to  have  discovered 
that  the  war  is  over,"  returned  Clara.  "  He 
4  still  waves.' " 

"  It  is  likely  that  certain  obstinate  per 
sons  on  both  sides  of  Mason  and  Dixon's 
line  will  be  a  long  time  making  the  dis 
covery.  Some  will  never  make  it  —  so 
much  the  worse  for  them  and  the  country." 

Mrs.  Wesley  meditated  and  said  nothing, 
but  I  saw  that  so  far  as  she  and  the  colonel 
were  concerned  the  war  was  not  over. 


IV 

THIS  slight  breeze  cleared  the  atmosphere 
for  the  time  being.  My  cousin  Flagg  took 
pains  to  avoid  all  but  the  most  indirect 
allusions  to  the  war,  except  when  we  were 
alone,  and  in  several  small  ways  endeavored 
—  with  not  too  dazzling  success  —  to  be 
agreeable  to  Clara.  The  transparency  of 
the  effort  was  perhaps  the  partial  cause  of 
its  failure.  And  then,  too,  the  nature  of  his 
little  attentions  was  not  always  carefully 
considered  on  his  part.  For  example,  Mrs. 
Wesley  could  hardly  be  expected  to  lend 
herself  with  any  grace  at  all  to  the  proposal 
he  made  one  sultry  June  evening  to  "  knock 
her  up  "  a  mint-julep,  "  the  most  refreshing 
beverage  on  earth,  madam,  in  hot  weather, 
I  can  assure  you."  Judge  Ashburton  Tod- 
hunter,  of  Fauquier  County,  had  taught 
him  to  prepare  this  pungent  elixir  from 
a  private  receipt  for  which  the  judge  had 


190          MY  COUSIN  THE   COLONEL 

once  refused  the  sum  of  fifty  dollars,  offered 
to  him  by  Colonel  Stanley  Bluegrass,  of 
Chattanooga,  and  this  was  at  a  moment, 
too,  when  the  judge  had  been  losing  very 
heavily  at  draw  poker. 

"All  quiet  along  the  Potomac,"  whis 
pered  the  colonel,  with  a  momentary  pride 
in  the  pacific  relations  he  had  established 
between  himself  and  Mrs.  Wesley. 

As  the  mint  and  one  or  two  other  neces 
sary  ingredients  were  lacking  to  our  family 
stores,  the  idea  of  julep  was  dismissed  as  a 
vain  dream,  and  its  place  supplied  by  iced 
Congress  water,  a  liquid  which  my  cousin 
characterized,  in  a  hasty  aside  to  me,  as 
being  a  drink  fit  only  for  imbecile  infants 
of  a  tender  age. 

Washington  Flagg's  frequent  and  fa 
miliar  mention  of  governors,  judges,  colo 
nels,  and  majors  clearly  indicated  that  he 
had  moved  in  aristocratic  latitudes  in  the 
South,  and  threw  light  on  his  disinclination 
to  consider  any  of  the  humbler  employ 
ments  which  might  have  been  open  to  him. 
He  had  so  far  conceded  to  the  exigency  of 


MY  COUSIN  THE   COLONEL  191 

the  case  as  to  inquire  if  there  were  a  possi 
ble  chance  for  him  in  the  Savonarola  Fire 
Insurance  Company.  He  had  learned  of 
my  secretaryship.  There  was  no  vacancy 
in  the  office,  and  if  there  had  been,  I  would 
have  taken  no  steps  to  fill  it  with  my 
cousin.  He  knew  nothing  of  the  business. 
Besides,  however  deeply  I  had  his  interests 
at  heart,  I  should  have  hesitated  to  risk  my 
own  situation  by  becoming  sponsor  for  so 
unmanageable  an  element  as  he  appeared 
to  be. 

At  odd  times  in  my  snuggery  after  din 
ner  Flagg  glanced  over  the  "  wants "  col 
umns  of  the  evening  journal,  but  never 
found  anything  he  wanted.  He  found 
many  amusing  advertisements  that  served 
him  as  pegs  on  which  to  hang  witty  com 
ment,  but  nothing  to  be  taken  seriously.  I 
ventured  to  suggest  that  he  should  adver 
tise.  He  received  the  idea  with  little 
warmth. 

"  No,  my  dear  boy,  I  can't  join  the  long 
procession  of  scullions,  cooks,  butlers,  va 
lets,  and  bottle-washers  which  seem  to 


192          MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

make  up  so  large  a  part  of  your  popula 
tion.  I  could  n't  keep  step  with  them.  It 
is  altogether  impossible  for  me  to  conduct 
myself  in  this  matter  like  a  menial-of-all- 
work  out  of  place.  '  Wanted,  a  situation, 
by  a  respectable  young  person  of  temper 
ate  habits  ;  understands  the  care  of  horses ; 
is  willing  to  go  into  the  country  and  milk 
the  cow  with  the  crumpled  horn.'  No ; 
many  thanks." 

*'  State  your  own  requirements,  Flagg. 
I  did  n't  propose  that  you  should  offer 
yourself  as  coachman." 

"It  would  amount  to  the  same  thing, 
Wesley.  I  should  at  once  be  relegated 
to  his  level.  Some  large  opportunity  is 
dead  sure  to  present  itself  to  me  if  I  wait. 
I  believe  the  office  should  seek  the  man." 

"  I  have  noticed  that  a  man  has  to  meet 
his  opportunities  more  than  half  way,  or 
he  does  n't  get  acquainted  with  them.  Mo 
hammed  was  obliged  to  go  to  the  mountain, 
after  waiting  for  the  mountain  to  come  to 
him." 

"  Mohammed's    mistake    was     that    he 


MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL  193 

did  n't  wait  long  enough.  He  was  too  im 
patient.  But  don't  you  fret.  I  have  come 
to  Yankeedom  to  make  my  fortune.  The 
despot's  heel  is  on  your  shore,  and  it  means 
to  remain  there  until  he  hears  of  something 
greatly  to  his  advantage." 

A  few  days  following  this  conversation, 
Mr.  Nelson,  of  Files  and  Nelson,  wholesale 
grocers  on  Front  Street,  mentioned  to  me 
casually  that  he  was  looking  for  a  shipping- 
clerk.  Before  the  war  the  firm  had  done 
an  extensive  Southern  trade,  which  they 
purposed  to  build  up  again  now  that  the 
ports  of  the  South  were  thrown  open.  The 
place  in  question  involved  a  great  deal  of 
outdoor  work  —  the  loading  and  unloading 
of  spicy  cargoes,  a  life  among  the  piers  — 
all  which  seemed  to  me  just  suited  to  my 
cousin's  woodland  nature.  I  could  not 
picture  him  nailed  to  a  desk  in  a  counting- 
room.  The  salary  was  not  bewildering, 
but  the  sum  was  to  be  elastic,  if  ability 
were  shown.  Here  was  an  excellent  chance, 
a  stepping-stone,  at  all  events  ;  perhaps  the 
large  opportunity  itself,  artfully  disguised 


194          MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

as  fifteen  dollars  a  week.  I  spoke  of  Flagg 
to  Mr.  Nelson,  and  arranged  a  meeting 
between  them  for  the  next  day. 

I  said  nothing  of  the  matter  at  the  din 
ner  table  that  evening ;  but  an  encouraging 
thing  always  makes  a  lantern  of  me,  and 
Clara  saw  the  light  in  my  face.  As  soon 
as  dinner  was  over  I  drew  my  cousin  into 
the  little  side  room,  and  laid  the  affair 
before  him. 

"  And  I  have  made  an  appointment  for 
you  to  meet  Mr.  Nelson  to-morrow  at  one 
o'clock,"  I  said,  in  conclusion. 

"  My  dear  Wesley  "  —  he  had  listened 
to  me  in  silence,  and  now  spoke  without 
enthusiasm  —  "I  don't  know  what  you 
were  thinking  of  to  do  anything  of  the 
sort.  I  will  not  keep  the  appointment 
with  that  person.  The  only  possible  inter 
course  I  could  have  with  him  would  be  to 
order  groceries  at  his  shop.  The  idea  of  a 
man  who  has  moved  in  the  best  society  of 
the  South,  who  has  been  engaged  in  great 
if  unsuccessful  enterprises,  who  has  led  the 
picked  chivalry  of  his  oppressed  land 


MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL  195 

asrainst  the  Northern  hordes  —  the  idea  of 

O 

a  gentleman  of  this  kidney  meekly  simmer 
ing  down  into  a  factotum  to  a  Yankee 
dealer  in  canned  goods  !  No,  sir ;  I  reckon 
I  can  do  better  than  that." 

The  lantern  went  out. 

I  resolved  that  moment  to  let  my  cousin 
shape  his  own  destiny  —  a  task  which  in 
no  way  appeared  to  trouble  him.  And, 
indeed,  now  that  I  look  back  to  it,  why 
should  he  have  troubled  himself  ?  He  had 
a  comfortable  if  not  luxurious  apartment 
in  Macdougal  Street ;  a  daily  dinner  that 
asked  only  to  be  eaten  ;  a  wardrobe  that 
was  replenished  when  it  needed  replenish 
ing  ;  a  weekly  allowance  that  made  up  for 
its  modesty  by  its  punctuality.  If  ever  a 
man  was  in  a  position  patiently  to  await 
the  obsequious  approach  of  large  oppor 
tunities  that  man  was  Washington  Flagg. 
He  was  not  insensible  to  the  fact.  He 
passed  his  time  serenely.  He  walked  the 
streets  —  Flagg  was  a  great  walker  —  some 
times  wandering  for  hours  in  the  Central 
Park.  His  Southern  life,  passed  partly 


196          MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

among  plantations,  had  given  him  a  relish 
for  trees  and  rocks  and  waters.  He  was 
also  a  hungry  reader  of  novels.  When  he 
had  devoured  our  slender  store  of  fiction, 
which  was  soon  done,  he  took  books  from  a 
small  circulating  library  on  Sixth  Avenue. 
That  he  gave  no  thought  whatever  to  the 
future  was  clear.  He  simply  drifted  down 
the  gentle  stream  of  the  present.  Suf 
ficient  to  the  day  was  the  sunshine  thereof. 
In  spite  of  his  unforgivable  inertia,  and 
the  egotism  that  enveloped  him  like  an  at 
mosphere,  there  was  a  charm  to  the  man 
that  put  my  impatience  to  sleep.  I  tried 
to  think  that  this  indifference  and  sunny 
idleness  were  perhaps  the  natural  reaction 
of  that  larger  life  of  emotion  and  activity 
from  which  he  had  just  emerged.  I  re 
flected  a  great  deal  on  that  life,  and,  though 
I  lamented  the  fact  that  he  had  drawn  his 
sword  on  the  wrong  side,  there  was,  down 
deep  in  my  heart,  an  involuntary  sympa 
thetic  throb  for  the  valor  that  had  not 
availed.  I  suppose  the  inexplicable  ties  of 
kinship  had  something  to  do  with  all  this. 


MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL  197 

Washington  Flagg  had  now  been  with 
us  five  weeks.  He  usually  lingered  awhile 
after  dinner;  sometimes  spent  the  entire 
evening  with  the  family,  or,  rather,  with 
me,  for  Mrs.  Wesley  preferred  the  sitting- 
room  to  my  den  when  I  had  company. 
Besides,  there  were  Sheridan  and  Ulysses 
to  be  looked  to.  Toward  the  close  of  the 
sixth  week  I  noticed  that  Flagg  had  fallen 
into  a  way  of  leaving  immediately  after 
dinner.  He  had  also  fallen  into  another 
way  not  so  open  to  pleasant  criticism. 

By  degrees  —  by  degrees  so  subtle  as 
almost  to  escape  measurement  —  he  had 
glided  back  to  the  forbidden  and  danger 
ous  ground  of  the  war.  At  first  it  was  an 
intangible  reference  to  something  that  oc 
curred  on  such  and  such  a  date,  the  date 
in  question  being  that  of  some  sanguinary 
battle ;  then  a  swift  sarcasm,  veiled  and 
softly  shod;  then  a  sarcasm  that  dropped 
its  veil  for  an  instant,  and  showed  its  sharp 
features.  At  last  his  thought  wore  no  dis 
guise.  Possibly  the  man  could  not  help  it ; 
possibly  there  was  something  in  the  atmos- 


198 

phere  of  the  house  that  impelled  him  to 
say  things  which  he  would  have  been  un 
likely  to  say  elsewhere.  Whatever  was  the 
explanation,  my  cousin  Flagg  began  to 
make  himself  disagreeable  again  at  meal 
times. 

He  had  never  much  regarded  my  disap 
proval,  and  now  his  early  ill-defined  fear 
of  Mrs.  Wesley  was  evaporated.  He  no 
longer  hesitated  to  indulge  in  his  war  rem 
iniscences,  which  necessarily  brought  his 
personal  exploits  under  a  calcium-light. 
These  exploits  usually  emphasized  his  inti 
macy  with  some  of  the  more  dashing  South 
ern  leaders,  such  as  Stonewall  Jackson  and 
Jeb  Stuart  and  Mosby.  We  found  our 
selves  practically  conscripted  in  the  Con 
federate  army.  We  were  taken  on  long 
midnight  rides  through  the  passes  of  the 
Cumberland  Mountains  and  hurled  on  some 
Federal  outpost ;  we  were  made  —  a  mere 
handful  as  we  were  —  to  assault  and  carry 
most  formidable  earthworks ;  we  crossed 
dangerous  fords,  and  bivouacked  under 
boughs  hung  with  weird  gonfalons  of  gray 


MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL  199 

moss,  slit  here  and  there  by  the  edge  of 
a  star.  Many  a  time  we  crawled  stealthily 
through  tangled  vines  and  shrubs  to  the 
skirt  of  a  wood,  and  across  a  fallen  log 
sighted  the  Yankee  picket  whose  bayonet 
point  glimmered  now  and  then  far  off  in 
the  moonlight.  We  spent  a  great  many 
hours  around  the  camp-fire  counting  our 
metaphorical  scalps. 

One  evening  the  colonel  was  especially 
exasperating  with  anecdotes  of  Stonewall 
Jackson,  and  details  of  what  he  said  to  the 
general  and  what  the  general  said  to  him. 

"  Stonewall  Jackson  often  used  to  say 
to  me,  '  George  '  —  he  always  called  me 
George,  in  just  that  off-hand  way  — 
*  George,  when  we  get  to  New  York,  you 
shall  have  quarters  in  the  Astor  House,  and 
pasture  your  mare  Spitfire  in  the  park.' " 

"That  was  very  thoughtful  of  Stone 
wall  Jackson,"  remarked  Mrs.  Wesley, 
with  the  faintest  little  whiteness  gathering 
at  the  lips.  "  I  am  sorry  that  your  late 
friend  did  not  accompany  you  to  the  city, 
and  personally  superintend  your  settlement 


200          MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

here.  He  would  have  been  able  to  sur 
round  you  with  so  many  more  comforts 
than  you  have  in  Macdougal  Street." 

The  colonel  smiled  upon  Clara,  and  made 
a  deprecating  gesture  with  his  left  hand. 
Nothing  seemed  to  pierce  his  ironclad  com 
posure.  A  moment  afterward  he  returned 
to  the  theme,  and  recited  some  verses  called 
"  Stonewall  Jackson's  Way."  He  recited 
them  very  well.  One  stanza  lingers  in  my 
memory :  — 

"  We  see  him  now  —  the  old  slouched  hat 

Cocked  o'er  his  brow  askew, 
The  shrewd,  dry  smile,  the  speech  so  pat, 

So  calm,  so  blunt,  so  true. 
The  Blue-light  Elder  knows  'em  well. 
Says  he :  '  That 's  Banks  ;  he 's  fond  of  shell. 
Lord  save  his  soul !  we  '11  give  him  — '     Well, 

That 's  Stonewall  Jackson's  way." 

"  His  ways  must  have  been  far  from 
agreeable,"  observed  my  wife,  "  if  that  is 
a  sample  of  them." 

After  the  colonel  had  taken  himself  off, 
Mrs.  Wesley,  sinking  wearily  upon  the 
sofa,  said,  "  I  think  I  am  getting  rather 
tired  of  Stonewall  Jackson." 


MY  COUSIN  THE   COLONEL  201 

44  We  both  are  my  dear ;  and  some  of 
our  corps  commanders  used  to  find  him 
rather  tiresome  now  and  then.  He  was 
really  a  great  soldier,  Clara ;  perhaps  the 
greatest  on  the  other  side." 

"  I  suppose  he  was ;  but  Flagg  comes 
next  —  according  to  his  own  report.  Why, 
Tom,  if  your  cousin  had  been  in  all  the 
battles  he  says  he  has,  the  man  would  have 
been  killed  ten  times  over.  He  'd  have 
had  at  least  an  arm  or  a  leg  shot  off." 

That  Washington  Flagg  had  all  his 
limbs  on  was  actually  becoming  a  griev 
ance  to  Mrs.  Wesley. 

The  situation  filled  me  with  anxiety. 
Between  my  cousin's  deplorable  attitude 
and  my  wife's  justifiable  irritation,  I  was 
extremely  perplexed.  If  I  had  had  a  dozen 
cousins,  the  solution  of  the  difficulty  would 
have  been  simple.  But  to  close  our  door 
on  our  only  kinsman  was  an  intolerable 
alternative. 

If  any  word  of  mine  has  caused  the  im 
pression  that  Clara  was  not  gentle  and 
sympathetic  and  altogether  feminine,  I  have 


202          MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

wronged  her.  The  reserve  which  strangers 
mistook  for  coldness  was  a  shell  that 
melted  at  the  slightest  kind  touch,  her  mas 
terful  air  the  merest  seeming.  But  what 
ever  latent  antagonism  lay  in  her  nature 
the  colonel  had  the  faculty  of  bringing  to 
the  surface.  It  must  be  conceded  that  the 
circumstances  in  which  she  was  placed  were 
trying,  and  Clara  was  without  that  strong, 
perhaps  abnormal,  sense  of  relationship 
which  sustained  me  in  the  ordeal.  Later 
on,  when  matters  grew  more  complicated, 
I  could  but  admire  her  resignation — if  it 
were  not  helpless  despair.  Sometimes,  in 
deed,  she  was  unable  to  obliterate  herself, 
and  not  only  stood  by  her  guns,  but  carried 
the  war  into  the  enemy's  country.  I  very 
frequently  found  myself  between  two  fires, 
and  was  glad  to  drag  what  small  fragments 
were  left  of  me  from  the  scene  of  action. 
In  brief,  the  little  house  in  Clinton  Place 
was  rapidly  transforming  itself  into  a 
ghastly  caricature  of  home. 

Up  to  the  present  state   of  affairs  the 
colonel  had  never  once  failed  to  appear  at 


MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL  203 

dinner-time.  We  had  become  so  accus 
tomed  to  his  ring  at  the  prescribed  hour, 
and  to  hearing  him  outside  in  the  hall 
softly  humming  "  The  Bonny  Blue  Mag," 
or,  "  I  wish  I  was  in  Dixie's  Land "  (a 
wish  which  he  did  not  wholly  monopolize) 
—  we  had,  I  repeat,  become  so  accustomed 
to  these  details  that  one  night  when  he  ab 
sented  himself  we  experienced  a  kind  of 
alarm.  It  was  not  until  the  clock  struck 
ten  that  we  gave  over  expecting  him.  Then, 
fearing  that  possibly  he  was  ill,  I  put  on 
my  hat  and  stepped  round  to  Macdougal 
Street.  Mr.  Flagg  had  gone  out  late  in 
the  afternoon,  and  had  not  returned.  No, 
he  had  left  no  word  in  case  any  one  called. 
What  had  happened?  I  smile  to  myself 
now,  and  I  have  smiled  a  great  many  times, 
at  the  remembrance  of  how  worried  I  was 
that  night  as  I  walked  slowly  back  to 
Clinton  Place. 

The  next  evening  my  cousin  explained 
his  absence.  He  had  made  the  acquaint 
ance  of  some  distinguished  literary  gentle 
men,  who  had  invited  him  to  dine  with 


204          MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

them  at  a  certain  German  cafe,  which  at  an 
earlier  date  had  been  rather  famous  as  the 
rendezvous  of  a  group  of  young  journalists, 
wits,  and  unblossomed  poets,  known  as 
"The  Bohemians."  The  war  had  caused 
sad  havoc  with  these  light-hearted  Knights 
of  the  Long  Table,  and  it  was  only  upon  a 
scattered  remnant  of  the  goodly  company 
that  the  colonel  had  fallen.  How  it  came 
about,  I  do  not  know.  I  know  that  the  ac 
quaintance  presently  flowered  into  intimacy, 
and  that  at  frequent  intervals  after  this  we 
had  a  vacant  chair  at  table.  My  cousin  did 
not  give  himself  the  pains  to  advise  us  of 
his  engagements,  so  these  absences  were 
not  as  pleasant  as  they  would  have  been  if 
we  had  not  expected  him  every  minute. 

Recently,  too,  our  expectation  of  his 
coming  was  tinged  with  a  dread  which 
neither  I  nor  Mrs.  Wesley  had  named  to 
each  other.  A  change  was  gradually  taking 
place  in  my  cousin.  Hitherto  his  amiabil 
ity,  even  when  he  was  most  unendurable, 
had  been  a  part  of  him.  Obviously  he  was 
losing  that  lightness  of  spirit  which  we  once 


MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL  205 

disliked  and  now  began  to  regret.  He  was 
inclined  to  be  excitable  and  sullen  by  turns, 
and  often  of  late  I  had  been  obliged  to  go 
to  the  bottom  of  my  diplomacy  in  prevent 
ing  some  painful  scene.  As  I  have  said, 
neither  my  wife  nor  I  had  spoken  definitely 
of  this  alteration ;  but  the  cause  and  nature 
of  it  could  not  long  be  ignored  between  us. 

"  How  patient  you  are  with  him,  dear !  " 
said  Mrs.  Wesley,  as  I  was  turning  out  the 
gas  after  one  of  our  grim  and  grotesque 
little  dinners:  the  colonel  had  not  dined 
with  us  before  for  a  week.  "  I  don't  see 
how  you  can  be  so  patient  with  the  man." 

"  Blood  is  thicker  than  water,  Clara." 

"  But  it  is  n't  thicker  than  whiskey  and 
water,  is  it  ?  " 

She  had  said  it.  The  colonel  was  drink 
ing.  It  was  not  a  question  of  that  light 
elixir  the  precious  receipt  for  which  had 
been  confided  to  him  by  Judge  Ashburton 
Todhunter,  of  Fauquier  County;  it  was  a 
question  of  a  heavier  and  more  immediate 
poison.  The  fact  that  Flagg  might  in  some 
desperate  state  drop  in  on  us  at  any  mo- 


206          MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

ment  stared  us  in  the  face.  That  was  a 
very  serious  contingency,  and  it  was  one  I 
could  not  guard  against.  I  had  no  false 
ideas  touching  my  influence  over  Washing 
ton  Flagg.  I  did  not  dream  of  attempting 
to  influence  him ;  I  was  powerless.  I  could 
do  nothing  but  wait,  and  wonder  what 
would  happen.  There  was  nothing  the  man 
might  not  be  capable  of  in  some  insane 
moment. 

In  the  mean  while  I  was  afraid  to  go  out 
of  an  evening  and  leave  Clara  alone.  It 
was  impossible  for  us  to  ask  a  friend  to 
dinner,  though,  indeed,  we  had  not  done 
that  since  my  cousin  dropped  down  on  us. 
It  was  no  relief  that  his  visits  grew  rarer 
and  rarer ;  the  apprehension  remained.  It 
was  no  relief  when  they  ceased  altogether, 
for  it  came  to  that  at  last. 

A  month  had  elapsed  since  he  had  called 
at  the  house.  I  had  caught  sight  of  him 
once  on  Broadway  as  I  was  riding  up  town 
in  an  omnibus.  He  was  standing  at  the  top 
of  the  steep  flight  of  steps  that  led  to  Herr 
Pfaffs  saloon  in  the  basement.  It  was 


MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL  207 

probably  Flagg's  dinner  hour.  Mrs.  Mor 
gan,  the  landlady  in  Macdougal  Street,  a 
melancholy  little  soul,  was  now  the  only 
link  between  me  and  my  kinsman.  I  had  a 
weekly  interview  with  her.  I  learned  that 
Mr.  Flagg  slept  late,  was  seldom  in  during 
the  day,  and  usually  returned  after  mid 
night.  A  person  with  this  eccentric  scheme 
of  life  was  not  likely  to  be  at  home  at  such 
hours  as  I  might  find  it  convenient  to  call. 
Nevertheless,  from  time  to  time  I  knocked 
at  the  unresponsive  door  of  his  room.  The 
two  notes  I  had  written  to  him  he  left  un 
answered. 

All  this  was  very  grievous.  He  had  been 
a  trouble  to  me  when  I  had  him,  and  he 
was  a  trouble  to  me  now  I  had  lost  him. 
My  trouble  had  merely  changed  its  color. 
On  what  downward  way  were  his  footsteps  ? 
What  was  to  be  the  end  of  it  ?  Sometimes 
I  lay  awake  at  night  thinking  of  him.  Of 
course,  if  he  went  to  the  dogs,  he  had  no 
body  to  blame  but  himself.  I  was  not  re 
sponsible  for  his  wrong-going ;  nevertheless, 
I  could  not  throw  off  my  anxiety  in  the 


208          MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

matter.  That  Flagg  was  leading  a  wilu 
life  in  these  days  was  presumable.  Indeed, 
certain  rumors  to  that  effect  were  indirectly 
blown  to  me  from  the  caves  of  Gambrinus. 
Not  that  I  believe  the  bohemians  demoral 
ized  him.  He  probably  demoralized  the 
bohemians.  I  began  to  reflect  whether  fate 
had  not  behaved  rather  handsomely,  after 
all,  in  not  giving  me  a  great  many  relatives. 
If  I  remember  rightly,  it  was  two  months 
since  I  had  laid  eyes  on  my  cousin,  when, 
on  returning  home  one  evening,  I  noticed 
that  the  front  door  stood  wide  open,  and 
had  apparently  been  left  to  take  care  of  it 
self.  As  I  mounted  the  steps,  a  little  an 
noyed  at  Mary's  carelessness,  I  heard  voices 
in  the  hall.  Washington  Flagg  was  stand 
ing  at  the  foot  of  the  staircase,  with  his 
hand  on  the  newel-post,  and  Mrs.  Wesley 
was  half-way  up  the  stairs,  as  if  in  the  act 
of  descending.  I  learned  later  that  she 
had  occupied  this  position  for  about  three 
quarters  of  an  hour.  She  was  extremely 
pale  and  much  agitated.  Flagg's  flushed 
face  and  tilted  hat  told  his  part  of  the  story. 


M  T  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL  209 

He  was  not  in  one  of  his  saturnine  moods. 
He  was  amiably  and,  if  I  may  say  it,  grace 
fully  drunk,  and  evidently  had  all  his  wits 
about  him. 

"  I  've  been  telling  Mrs.  Wesley,"  he  be 
gan  at  once,  as  if  I  had  been  present  all  the 
while,  and  he  was  politely  lifting  me  into 
the  conversation  —  "I 've  been  telling  Mrs. 
Wesley  that  I  'm  a  Lost  Cause." 

"  A  lost  soul,"  was  Mrs.  Wesley's  amend 
ment  from  the  staircase.  "  Oh,  Tom,  I  am 
so  glad  you  have  come!  I  thought  you 
never  would !  I  let  him  in  an  hour  or  two 
ago,  and  he  has  kept  me  here  ever  since." 

"You  were  so  entertaining,"  said  my 
cousin,  with  a  courteous  sweep  of  his  dis 
engaged  hand,  and  speaking  with  that  cor 
rectness  of  enunciation  which  sometimes 
survives  everything. 

"  Flagg,"  I  said,  stepping  to  his  side, 
"  you  will  oblige  me  by  returning  to  your 
lodgings." 

44  You  think  I  'm  not  all  right  ?  " 

44 1  am  sure  of  it." 

44  And  you  don't  want  me  here,  dear  old 
boy?" 


210          MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

"  No,  I  don't  want  you  here.  The  time 
has  come  for  me  to  be  frank  with  you,  Flagg, 
and  I  see  that  your  mind  is  clear  enough 
to  enable  you  to  understand  what  I  say." 

"  I  reckon  I  can  follow  you,  Thomas." 

"My  stock  of  romantic  nonsense  about 
kinship  and  family  duties,  and  all  that,  has 
given  out,  and  will  not  be  renewed." 

"  Won't  do  business  any  more  at  the  old 
stand?" 

"Exactly  so.  I  have  done  everything 
I  could  to  help  you,  and  you  have  done 
nothing  whatever  for  yourself.  You  have 
not  even  done  yourself  the  scant  justice  of 
treating  Clara  and  me  decently.  In  future 
you  will  be  obliged  to  look  after  your  own 
affairs,  financial  as  well  as  social.  Your 
best  plan  now  is  to  go  to  work.  I  shall  no 
longer  concern  myself  with  your  comings 
and  goings,  except  so  far  as  to  prevent  you 
from  coming  here  and  disturbing  Clara. 
Have  you  put  that  down  ?  " 

"  Wesley,  my  boy,  I  '11  pay  you  for  this." 

"  If  you  do,  it  will  be  the  first  thing  you 
have  paid  for  since  you  came  North." 


MY  COUSIN  THE   COLONEL  211 

My  statement,  however  accurate,  was  not 
wholly  delicate,  and  I  subsequently  regret 
ted  it,  but  when  a  patient  man  loses  his 
patience  he  goes  to  extremes.  Washington 
Flagg  straightened  himself  for  an  instant, 
and  then  smiled  upon  me  in  an  amused, 
patronizing  way  quite  untranslatable. 

"  Thomas,  that  was  neat,  very  neat  —  for 
you.  When  I  see  Judge  Ashburton  Tod- 
hunter  I  '11  tell  him  about  it.  It 's  the  sort 
of  mild  joke  he  likes." 

"  I  should  be  proud  to  have  Judge  Ash- 
burton  Todhunter's  approval  of  any  remark 
of  mine,  but  in  the  mean  while  it  would  be 
a  greater  pleasure  to  me  to  have  you  return 
at  once  to  Macdougal  Street,  where,  no 
doubt,  Mrs.  Morgan  is  delaying  dinner  for 

you." 

"  Say  no  more,  Wesley.  I  '11  never  set 
foot  in  your  house  again,  as  sure  as  my 
name  is  Flagg  —  and  long  may  I  wave  o'er 
the  land  of  the  free  and  the  home  of  the 
brave." 

"  He  is  a  kind  of  Flagg  that  I  don't  wish 
to  have  wave  over  my  home,"  said  Mrs. 


212          MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

Wesley,  descending  the  stairs  as  my  cousin 
with  painful  care  closed  the  door  softly 
behind  him. 

So  the  end  was  come.  It  had  come  with 
less  unpleasantness  than  I  should  have  pre 
dicted.  The  ties  of  kindred,  too  tightly 
stretched,  had  snapped ;  but  they  had 
snapped  very  gently,  so  to  speak. 


WASHINGTON  FLAGG  was  as  good  as  his 
word,  which  is  perhaps  not  a  strong  in 
dorsement.  He  never  again  set  foot  in  my 
house.  A  week  afterward  I  found  that  he 
had  quitted  Macdougal  Street. 

"He  has  gone  South,"  said  Mrs.  Mor 
gan. 

"  Did  he  leave  no  message  for  me  ?  " 

"  He  did  n't  leave  a  message  for  nobody." 

"  Did  he  happen  to  say  to  what  part  of 
the  South  he  was  bound  ?  " 

"  He  said  he  was  going  back  to  Dixie's 
land,  and  didn't  say  no  more." 

That  was  all.  His  departure  had  been 
as  abrupt  and  unlooked-for  as  his  arrival. 
I  wondered  if  he  would  turn  up  again  at 
the  end  of  another  twenty  years,  and  I 
wondered  how  he  had  paid  his  traveling 
expenses  to  the  land  of  the  magnolia  and 
the  persimmon.  That  mystery  was  solved 


214          MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

a  few  days  subsequently  when  a  draft  (for 
so  reasonable  a  sum  as  not  to  be  worth 
mentioning  to  Clara)  was  presented  to  me 
for  payment  at  my  office. 

Washington  Flagg  was  gone,  but  his 
shadow  was  to  linger  for  a  while  longer  on 
our  household.  It  was  difficult  to  realize 
that  the  weight  which  had  oppressed  us  had 
been  removed.  We  were  scarcely  conscious 
of  how  heavy  it  had  been  until  it  was  lifted. 
I  was  now  and  then  forced  to  make  an 
effort  not  to  expect  the  colonel  to  dinner. 

A  month  or  two  after  his  disappearance 
an  incident  occurred  which  brought  him 
back  very  vividly  and  in  a  somewhat  sinis 
ter  shape  to  our  imaginations.  Quite  late 
one  night  there  was  a  sharp  ring  at  the 
door.  Mary  having  gone  to  bed,  I  an 
swered  the  bell.  On  the  doorstep  stood  a 
tall,  pale  girl,  rather  shabbily  dressed,  but 
with  a  kind  of  beauty  about  her ;  it  seemed 
to  flash  from  her  eyelashes,  which  I  noticed 
were  very  heavy.  The  hall  light  fell  full 
upon  this  slight  figure,  standing  there 
wrapped  in  an  insufficient  shawl,  against  a 


MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL  215 

dense  background  of  whirling  snow-flakes. 
She  asked  if  I  could  give  her  Colonel 
Flagg's  address.  On  receiving  my  reply, 
the  girl  swiftly  descended  the  steps,  and 
vanished  into  the  darkness.  There  was  a 
tantalizing  point  of  romance  and  mystery 
to  all  this.  As  I  slowly  closed  the  front 
door  I  felt  that  perhaps  I  was  closing  it  on 
a  tragedy  —  one  of  those  piteous,  unwritten 
tragedies  of  the  great  city.  I  have  wondered 
a  thousand  times  who  that  girl  was  and 
what  became  of  her. 

Before  the  end  of  the  year  another  in 
cident  —  this  time  with  a  touch  of  comedy 
—  lighted  up  the  past  of  my  kinsman. 
Among  the  traveling  agents  for  the  Savon 
arola  Fire  Insurance  Company  was  a  young 
man  by  the  name  of  Brett,  Charles  Brett,  a 
new  employe.  His  family  had  been  ruined 
by  the  war,  and  he  had  vandered  North,  as 
the  son  of  many  a  Southern  gentleman  had 
been  obliged  to  do,  to  earn  his  living.  We 
became  friends,  and  frequently  lunched  to 
gether  when  his  business  brought  him  to 
the  city.  Brett  had  been  in  the  Confederate 


216          MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

army,  and  it  occurred  to  me  one  day  to 
ask  him  if  he  had  ever  known  my  cousin 
the  colonel.  Brett  was  acquainted  with  a 
George  W.  Flagg;  had  known  him  some 
what  intimately,  in  fact ;  but  it  was  probably 
not  the  same  man.  We  compared  notes, 
and  my  Flagg  was  his  Flagg. 

"But  he  wasn't  a  colonel,"  said  Brett. 
"  Why,  Flagg  was  n't  in  the  war  at  all.  I 
don't  fancy  he  heard  a  gun  fired,  unless  it 
went  off  by  accident  in  some  training-camp 
for  recruits.  He  got  himself  exempt  from 
service  in  the  field  by  working  in  the  gov 
ernment  saltworks.  A  heap  of  the  boys 
escaped  conscription  that  way." 

In  the  saltworks!  That  connected  my 
cousin  with  the  navy  rather  than  with  the 
army! 

I  would  have  liked  not  to  believe  Brett's 
statement,  but  it  was  so  circumstantial  and 
precise  as  not  to  be  doubted.  Brett  was  far 
from  suspecting  how  deeply  his  information 
had  cut  me.  In  spite  of  my  loyalty,  the 
discovery  that  my  kinsman  had  not  been 
a  full-blown  rebel  was  vastly  humiliating. 


MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL  217 

How  that  once  curiously  regarded  flower  of 
chivalry  had  withered !  What  about  those 
reckless  moonlight  raids?  What  had  be 
come  of  Prince  Rupert,  at  the  head  of  his 
plumed  cavaliers,  sweeping  through  the  val 
ley  of  the  Shenandoah,  and  dealing  merited 
destruction  to  the  boys  in  blue  ?  In  view  of 
Brett's  startling  revelation,  my  kinsman's 
personal  anecdotes  of  Stonewall  Jackson 
took  on  an  amusing  quality  which  they  had 
not  possessed  for  us  in  the  original  telling. 

I  was  disappointed  that  Clara's  astonish 
ment  was  much  more  moderate  than  mine. 

"  He  was  too  brave,  Tom,  dear.  He  al 
ways  seemed  to  be  overdoing  it  just  a  grain, 
don't  you  think !  " 

I  didn't  think  so  at  the  time;  I  was 
afraid  he  was  telling  the  truth.  And  now, 
by  one  of  those  contradictions  inseparable 
from  weak  humanity,  I  regretted  that  he 
was  not.  A  hero  had  tumbled  from  the 
family  pedestal  —  a  misguided  hero,  to  be 
sure,  but  still  a  hero.  My  vanity,  which 
in  this  case  was  of  a  complex  kind,  had 
received  a  shock. 


218  MY  COUSIN  THE   COLONEL 

I  did  not  recover  from  it  for  nearly  three 
months,  when  I  received  a  second  shock  of  a 
more  serious  nature.  It  came  in  the  shape 
of  a  letter,  dated  at  Pensacola,  Florida,  and 
written  by  one  Sylvester  K.  Matthews,  ad 
vising  me  that  George  Flagg  had  died  of 
the  yellow  fever  in  that  city  on  the  previous 
month.  I  gathered  from  the  letter  that  the 
writer  had  been  with  my  cousin  through 
his  illness,  and  was  probably  an  intimate 
friend ;  at  all  events,  the  details  of  the  fu 
neral  had  fallen  to  the  charge  of  Mr.  Mat 
thews,  who  inclosed  the  receipted  bills  with 
the  remark  that  he  had  paid  them,  but  sup 
posed  that  I  would  prefer  to  do  so,  leaving 
it,  in  a  way,  at  my  option. 

The  news  of  my  cousin's  death  grieved 
me  more  than  I  should  have  imagined  be 
forehand.  He  had  not  appreciated  my 
kindness ;  he  had  not  added  to  my  happi 
ness  while  I  was  endeavoring  to  secure  his  ; 
he  had  been  flagrantly  ungrateful,  and  in 
one  or  two  minor  matters  had  deceived  me. 
Yet,  after  all  said  and  done,  he  was  my 
cousin,  my  only  cousin  —  and  he  was  dead. 


MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL  219 

Let  us  criticise  the  living,  but  spare  the 
dead. 

I  put  the  memoranda  back  into  the  en 
velope;  they  consisted  of  a  bill  for  medi 
cal  attendance,  a  board  bill,  the  nurse's 
account,  and  an  undertaker's  bill,  with  its 
pathetic  and,  to  me,  happily,  unfamiliar 
items.  For  the  rest  of  the  day  I  was  un 
able  to  fix  my  attention  on  my  work,  or  to 
compose  myself  sufficiently  to  write  to  Mr. 
Matthews.  I  quitted  the  office  that  even 
ing  an  hour  earlier  than  was  my  habit. 

Whether  Clara  was  deeply  affected  by 
what  had  happened,  or  whether  she  dis 
approved  of  my  taking  upon  myself  ex 
penses  which,  under  the  peculiar  circum 
stances,  might  properly  be  borne  by  Flagg's 
intimate  friend  and  comrade,  was  something 
I  could  not  determine.  She  made  no  com 
ments.  If  she  considered  that  I  had  al 
ready  done  all  that  my  duty  demanded  of 
me  to  do  for  my  cousin,  she  was  wise 
enough  not  to  say  so ;  for  she  must  have 
seen  that  I  took  a  different  and  unalterable 
view  of  it.  Clara  has  her  own  way  fifty- 


220          MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

nine  minutes  out  of  the  hour,  but  the 
sixtieth  minute  is  mine. 

She  was  plainly  not  disposed  to  talk  on 
the  subject ;  but  I  wanted  to  talk  with 
some  one  on  the  subject ;  so,  when  dinner 
was  through,  I  put  the  Matthews  papers 
into  my  pocket  and  went  up  to  my  friend 
Bleeker's,  in  Seventeenth  Street.  Though 
a  little  cynical  at  times,  he  was  a  man 
whose  judgment  I  thought  well  of. 

After  reading  the  letter  and  glancing 
over  the  memoranda,  Bleeker  turned  to 
me  and  said,  "  You  want  to  know  how  it 
strikes  me  —  is  that  it  ?  " 

"Well—  yes." 

"The  man  is  dead?" 

"  Yes." 

"  And  buried  ?  " 

"  Assuredly." 

"  And  the  bills  are  paid?  " 

"  You  see  yourself  they  are  receipted." 

"Well,  then,"  said  Bleeker,  "consider 
ing  all  things,  I  should  let  well  enough 
alone." 

"You  mean  you  would  do  nothing  in 
the  matter?  " 


MY  COUSIN   THE  COLONEL  221 

"  I  should  '  let  the  dead  past  bury  it? 
dead,'  as  Longfellow  says."  Bleeker  was 
always  quoting  Longfellow. 

"  But  it  is  n't  the  dead  past,  it 's  the  liv 
ing  present  that  has  attended  to  the  busi 
ness  ;  and  he  has  sent  in  his  account  with 
all  the  items.  I  can't  have  this  Matthews 
going  about  the  country  telling  everybody 
that  I  allowed  him  to  pay  my  cousin's 
funeral  expenses." 

"Then  pay  them.  You  have  come  to 
me  for  advice  after  making  up  your  mind 
to  follow  your  own  course.  That's  just 
the  way  people  do  when  they  really  want 
to  be  advised.  I  've  done  it  myself,  Wes 
ley  —  I  've  done  it  myself." 

The  result  was,  I  sent  Mr.  Matthews  a 
check,  after  which  I  impulsively  threw 
those  dreadful  bills  into  the  office  grate. 
I  had  no  right  to  do  it,  for  the  vouchers 
really  belonged  to  Mr.  Matthews,  and 
might  be  wanted  some  day ;  but  the^  had 
haunted  me  like  so  many  ghosts  until  I 
destroyed  them.  I  fell  asleep  that  night 
trying  to  recollect  whether  the  items  in- 


222          MY  COUSIN  THE  COLONEL 

eluded  a  headstone  for  my  cousin's  grave. 
I  could  n't  for  the  life  of  me  remember,  and 
it  troubled  me  not  a  little.  There  were 
enough  nameless  graves  in  the  South,  with 
out  his  being  added  to  the  number. 

One  day,  a  fortnight  later,  as  Clara  and 
I  were  finishing  dinner,  young  Brett  called 
at  the  house.  I  had  supposed  him  to  be  in 
Omaha^  He  had,  in  effect,  just  come  from 
there  and  elsewhere  on  one  of  his  long  busi 
ness  tours,  and  had  arrived  in  the  city  too 
late  in  the  afternoon  to  report  himself  at 
the  office.  He  now  dropped  in  merely  for 
a  moment,  but  we  persuaded  him  to  remain 
and  share  the  dessert  with  us.  I  purposed 
to  keep  him  until  Clara  left  us  to  our  ci 
gars.  I  wished  to  tell  him  of  my  cousin's 
death,  which  I  did  not  care  to  do  while  she 
was  at  the  table.  We  were  talking  of  this 
and  that,  when  Brett  looked  up,  and  said, 
rather  abruptly  :  — 

"  xJy  the  way,  I  saw  Flagg  on  the  street 
the  other  day  in  Mobile.  He  was  looking 
well." 

The  bit  of  melon  I  had  in  my  mouth 


MY  COUSIN  THE   COLONEL  223 

refused  to  be  swallowed.  I  fancy  that  my 
face  was  a  study.  A  dead  silence  followed ; 
and  then  my  wife  reached  across  the  table, 
and  pressing  my  hand,  said,  very  gently, — 
"  Wesley,  you  were  not  brilliant,  but 
you  were  good." 

All  this  was  longer  ago  than  I  care  to 
remember.  I  heard  no  more  from  Mr. 
Matthews.  Last  week,  oddly  enough, 
while  glancing  over  a  file  of  recent  South 
ern  newspapers,  I  came  across  the  announce 
ment  of  the  death  of  George  W.  Flagg. 
It  was  yellow  fever  this  time  also.  If  later 
on  I  receive  any  bills  in  connection  with 
that  event,  I  shall  let  my  friend  Bleeker 
audit  them. 


A  CHRISTMAS  FANTASY,  WITH 
A  MORAL 


HEE  name  was  Mildred  Wentworth,  and 
she  lived  on  the  slope  of  Beacon  Hill,  in 
one  of  those  old-fashioned  swell-front  houses 
which  have  the  inestimable  privilege  of  look 
ing  upon  Boston  Common.  It  was  Christ 
mas  afternoon,  and  she  had  gone  up  to  the 
blue  room,  on  the  fourth  floor,  in  order 
to  make  a  careful  inspection  in  solitude  of 
the  various  gifts  that  had  been  left  in  her 
slender  stocking  and  at  her  bedside  the 
previous  night. 

Mildred  was  in  some  respects  a  very  old 
child  for  her  age,  which  she  described  as 
being  "  half  past  seven,"  and  had  a  habit  of 
spending  hours  alone  in  the  large  front 
chamber  occupied  by  herself  and  the  gov 
erness.  This  day  the  governess  had  gone 


A   CHRISTMAS  FANTASY  225 

to  keep  Christmas  with  her  own  family  in 
South  Boston,  and  it  so  chanced  that  Mil 
dred  had  been  left  to  dispose  of  her  time 
as  she  pleased  during  the  entire  afternoon. 
She  was  well  content  to  have  the  oppor 
tunity,  for  fortune  had  treated  her  mag 
nificently,  and  it  was  deep  satisfaction, 
after  the  excitement  of  the  morning,  to 
sit  in  the  middle  of  that  spacious  room, 
with  its  three  windows  overlooking  the 
pearl  -  crusted  trees  in  the  Common,  and 
examine  her  treasures  without  any  chance 
of  interruption. 

The  looms  of  Cashmere  and  the  work 
shops  of  Germany,  the  patient  Chinaman 
and  the  irresponsible  polar  bear,  had  alike 
contributed  to  those  treasures.  Among 
other  articles  was  a  small  square  box,  cov 
ered  with  mottled  paper  and  having  an  out- 
landish,  mysterious  aspect,  as  if  it  belonged 
to  a  magician.  When  you  loosened  the 
catch  of  this  box,  possibly  supposing  it  to 
contain  bonbons  of  a  superior  quality,  there 
sprang  forth  a  terrible  little  monster,  with 
a  drifting  white  beard  like  a  snow-storm, 


226  A   CHRISTMAS  FANTASY 

round  emerald-green  eyes,  and  a  pessimistic 
expression  of  countenance  generally,  as 
though  he  had  been  reading  Tolstoi  or 
Schopenhauer. 

This  abrupt  personage,  whose  family 
name  was  Heliogabalus,  was  known  for 
simplicity's  sake  as  Jumping  Jack;  and 
though  the  explanation  of  the  matter  is  be 
set  with  difficulties,  it  is  not  to  be  concealed 
that  he  held  a  higher  place  in  the  esteem 
of  Miss  Wentworth  than  any  of  her  other 
possessions,  not  excluding  a  tall  wax  doll 
Jin  de  siecle,  with  a  pallid  complexion  and 
a  profusion  of  blonde  hair.  Titania  was  not 
more  in  love  with  Nick  Bottom  the  weaver 
than  Mildred  with  Jumping  Jack.  It  was 
surely  not  his  personal  beauty  that  won  her, 
for  he  had  none;  it  was  not  his  intellect, 
for  intellect  does  not  take  up  its  abode  in 
a  forehead  of  such  singular  construction  as 
that  of  Jumping  Jack.  But  whatever  the 
secret  charm  was,  it  worked.  On  a  more 
realistic  stage  than  this  we  see  analogous 
cases  every  day.  Perhaps  Oberon  still  ex 
ercises  his  fairy  craft  in  our  material  world, 


A  CHRISTMAS  FANTASY  227 

and  scatters  at  will  upon  the  eyelids  of 
mortals  the  magic  distillation  of  that  "  little 
Western  flower  "  which 

"  Will  make  or  man  or  woman  madly  dote 
Upon  the  next  live  creature  that  it  sees." 

For  an  hour  or  so  Mildred  amused  her 
self  sufficiently  by  shutting  Heliogabalus 
up  in  the  chest  and  letting  him  spring  out 
again;  then  she  grew  weary  of  the  diver 
sion,  and  finally  began  to  lose  patience  with 
her  elastic  companion  because  he  was  un 
able  to  crowd  himself  into  the  box  and 
undo  the  latch  with  his  own  fingers.  This 
was  extremely  unreasonable;  but  so  was 
Mildred  made. 

"  How  tedious  you  are ! "  she  cried,  at 
last.  "  You  dull  little  old  man,  I  don't  see 
how  I  ever  came  to  like  you.  I  don't  like 
you  any  more,  with  your  glass  eyes,  and 
your  silly  pink  mouth  always  open  and 
never  saying  the  least  thing.  What  do  you 
mean,  sir,  by  standing  and  staring  at  me  in 
that  tiresome  way  ?  You  look  enough  like 
Dobbs  the  butcher  to  be  his  brother,  or  to 
be  Dobbs  himself.  I  wonder  you  don't  up 


228  A   CHRISTMAS  FANTASY 

and  say,  '  Steaks  or  chops,  mum  ?  '  Dear 
me!  I  wish  you  really  had  some  life  in 
you,  and  could  move  about,  and  talk  with 
me,  and  make  yourself  agreeable.  Do  be 
alive!" 

Mildred  gave  a  little  laugh  at  her  own 
absurdity,  and  then,  being  an  imaginative 
creature,  came  presently  to  regard  the  idea 
as  not  altogether  absurd,  and,  finally,  as  not 
absurd  at  all.  If  a  bough  that  has  been 
frozen  to  death  all  winter  can  put  forth 
blossoms  in  the  spring,  why  might  not  an 
inanimate  object,  which  already  possessed 
many  of  the  surface  attributes  of  humanity, 
and  possibly  some  of  the  internal  mechan 
ism,  add  to  itself  the  crowning  gift  of 
speech  ?  In  view  of  the  daily  phenomena 
of  existence,  would  that  be  so  very  astonish 
ing  ?  Of  course  the  problem  took  a  simpler 
shape  than  this  in  Mildred's  unsophisticated 
thought. 

She  folded  her  hands  in  her  lap,  and. 
rocking  to  and  fro,  reflected  how  pleasant 
it  would  be  if  Jumping  Jack,  or  her  doll, 
could  come  to  life,  like  the  marble  lady  in 


A   CHRISTMAS  FANTASY  229 

the  play,  and  do  some  of  the  talking.  What 
wonderful  stories  Jumping  Jack  would  have 
to  tell,  for  example.  He  must  have  had  no 
end  of  remarkable  adventures  before  he 
lost  his  mind.  Probably  the  very  latest 
intelligence  from  Lilliput  was  in  his  posses 
sion,  and  perhaps  he  was  even  now  vainly 
trying  to  deliver  himself  of  it.  His  fixed, 
open  mouth  hinted  as  much.  The  Land  of 
the  Pygmies,  in  the  heart  of  Darkest  Africa 
—  just  then  widely  discussed  in  the  news 
papers  —  was  of  course  familiar  ground  to 
him.  How  interesting  it  would  be  to  learn, 
at  first  hand,  of  the  manners  and  customs 
of  those  little  folk.  Doubtless  he  had  been 
a  great  traveler  in  foreign  parts ;  the  label, 
in  German  text,  on  the  bottom  of  his  trunk 
showed  that  he  had  recently  come  from 
Munich.  Munich !  What  magic  there  was 
in  the  very  word !  As  Mildred  rocked  to 
and  fro,  her  active  little  brain  weaving  the 
most  grotesque  fancies,  a  drowsiness  stole 
over  her.  She  was  crooning  to  herself 
fainter  and  fainter,  and  every  instant  drift 
ing  nearer  to  the  shadowy  reefs  on  the 


230  A   CHRISTMAS  FANTASY 

western  coast  of  Nowhere,  when  she  heard 
a  soft,  inexplicable  rustling  sound  close  at 
her  side.  Mildred  lifted  her  head  quickly, 
just  in  time  to  behold  Heliogabalus  describe 
a  graceful  curve  in  the  air  and  land  lightly 
in  the  midst  of  her  best  Dresden  china  tea- 
set. 

"  Ho,  ho ! "  he  cried,  in  a  voice  preter- 
naturally  gruff  for  an  individual  not  above 
five  inches  in  height.  "  Ho,  ho !  "  And  he 
immediately  began  to  throw  Mildred's  cups 
and  saucers  and  plates  all  about  the  apart 
ment. 

"  Oh,  you  horrid,  wicked  little  man !  " 
cried  Mildred,  starting  to  her  feet.  "  Stop 
it!" 

"  Oh,  you  cross  little  girl !  "  returned  the 
dwarf,  with  his  family  leer.  "  You  surprise 
me !  "  And  another  plate  crashed  against 
the  blue-flowered  wall-paper. 

"Stop  it!"  she  repeated;  and  then  to 
herself,  "It's  a  mercy  I  waked  up  just 
when  I  did!" 

"  Patience,  my  child ;  I  'm  coming  there 
shortly,  to  smooth  your  hair  and  kiss  you." 


A   CHRISTMAS  FANTASY  231 

"  Do !  "  screamed  Mildred,  stooping  to 
pick  up  a  large  Japanese  crystal  which  lay 
absorbing  the  wintry  sunlight  at  her  feet. 

When  Heliogabalus  saw  that,  he  retired 
to  the  further  side  of  his  tenement,  peeping 
cautiously  over  the  top  and  around  the 
corner,  and  disappearing  altogether  when 
ever  Mildred  threatened  to  throw  the  crys 
tal  at  him.  Now  Miss  Wentworth  was 
naturally  a  courageous  girl,  and  when  she 
perceived  that  the  pygmy  was  afraid  of  her 
she  resolved  to  make  an  example  of  him. 
He  was  such  a  small  affair  that  it  really  did 
not  seem  worth  while  to  treat  him  with 
much  ceremony.  He  had  startled  her  at 
first,  his  manners  had  been  so  very  violent ; 
but  now  that  her  pulse  had  gone  down  she 
regarded  him  with  calm  curiosity,  and  won 
dered  what  he  would  do  next. 

"  Listen,"  he  said  presently,  in  a  queer, 
deferential  way,  as  he  partly  emerged  from 
his  hiding-place;  "I  came  to  request  the 
hand  of  mademoiselle  yonder,"  and,  nod 
ding  his  head  in  the  direction  of  Bloiidella, 
the  doll,  he  retreated  bashfully. 


232  A  CHRISTMAS  FANTASY 

"Her?"  cried  Mildred,  aghast. 

"You  are  very  nice,  but  I  can  't  marry 
out  of  my  own  set,  you  know,"  observed 
Heliogabalus,  invisible  behind  his  breast 
work.  This  shyness  was  mere  dissimula 
tion,  as  his  subsequent  behavior  proved. 

"  Who  would  have  thought  it !  "  mur 
mured  Mildred  to  herself ;  and  as  she 
glanced  suspiciously  at  Blondella,  sitting 
bolt  upright  between  the  windows,  with  her 
back  against  the  mopboard,  Mildred  fancied 
that  she  could  almost  detect  a  faint  roseate 
hue  stealing  into  the  waxen  cheek.  "  Who 
would  have  thought  it !  "  And  then,  ad 
dressing  Jumping  Jack,  she  cried,  "  Come 
here  directly ;  you  audacious  person  !  "  and 
she  stamped  her  foot  in  a  manner  that 
would  have  discouraged  most  suitors. 

But  Heliogabalus,  who  had  now  seated 
himself  on  the  lid  of  his  trunk  and  showed 
no  trace  of  his  late  diffidence,  smiled  su 
perciliously  as  he  twisted  off  a  bit  of  wire 
that  protruded  from  the  heel  of  one  of  his 
boots. 

This  effrontery  increased    Miss   Went- 


A   CHRISTMAS  FANTASY  233 

worth's  indignation,  and  likewise  rather 
embarrassed  her.  Perhaps  he  was  not 
afraid  of  her  after  all.  In  which  case  he 
was  worth  nothing  as  an  example. 

"  I  will  brush  you  off,  and  tread  on  you," 
she  observed  tentatively,  as  if  she  were  ad 
dressing  an  insect. 

"  Oh,  indeed,"  he  rejoined  derisively, 
crossing  his  legs. 

"  I  will !  "  cried  Mildred,  making  an  im 
pulsive  dash  at  him. 

Though  taken  at  a  disadvantage  the  mani 
kin  eluded  her  with  surprising  ease.  His 
agility  was  such  as  to  render  it  impossible 
to  determine  whether  he  was  an  old  young 
man  or  a  very  young  old  man.  Mildred 
eyed  him  doubtfully  for  a  moment,  and 
then  gave  chase.  Away  went  the  quaint 
little  figure,  now  darting  under  the  brass 
bedstead,  now  dodging  around  the  legs  of 
the  table,  and  now  slipping  between  the 
feet  of  his  pursuer  at  the  instant  she  was 
on  the  point  of  laying  hand  on  him.  Ow 
ing  doubtless  to  some  peculiarity  of  his  ar 
ticulation,  each  movement  of  his  limbs  was 


234  A  CHRISTMAS  FANTASY 

accompanied  by  a  rustling  wiry  sound  like 
the  faint  reverberation  of  a  banjo-string 
somewhere  in  the  distance. 

Heliogabalus  may  have  been  a  person 
with  no  great  conversational  gift,  but  his 
gymnastic  acquirements  were  of  the  first 
order.  Mildred  not  only  could  not  catch 
him,  but  she  could  not  restrain  the  mani 
kin  from  meanwhile  doing  all  kinds  of  des 
ultory  mischief ;  for  in  the  midst  of  his 
course  he  would  pause  to  overturn  her  tin 
kitchen,  or  shy  a  plate  across  the  room,  or 
give  a  vicious  twitch  to  the  lovely  golden 
hair  of  Blondella,  in  spite  of  —  perhaps  in 
consequence  of  —  his  recent  tender  ad 
vances.  It  was  plain  that  in  eluding  Mil 
dred  he  was  prompted  by  caprice  rather 
than  by  fear. 

"If  things  go  on  in  this  way,"  she  re 
flected,  "  I  sha'n't  have  anything  left.  If  I 
could  only  get  the  dreadful  little  creature 
into  a  corner !  There  goes  my  tureen ! 
WhatsAotf  Ido?" 

To  quit  the  room,  even  for  a  moment,  in 
order  to  call  for  assistance  at  the  head  of 


A    CHRISTMAS  FANTASY  235 

the  staircase,  where,  moreover,  her  voice 
was  not  likely  to  reach  any  one,  was  to 
leave  everything  at  the  mercy  of  that  small 
demon.  Mildred  was  out  of  breath  with 
running,  and  ready  to  burst  into  tears  with 
exasperation,  when  a  different  mode  of 
procedure  suggested  itself  to  her.  She 
would  make  believe  that  she  was  no  longer 
angry,  and  perhaps  she  could  accomplish 
by  cunning  what  she  had  failed  to  compass 
by  violence.  She  would  consent  —  at  least 
seem  to  consent  —  to  let  him  marry  Blon- 
della,  though  he  had  lately  given  no  signs 
of  a  very  fervid  attachment.  Beyond  this 
Mildred  had  no  definite  scheme,  when  the 
story  of  the  Fisherman  and  the  Evil  Afrite 
flashed  upon  her  memory  from  the  pages 
of  "  The  Arabian  Nights."  Her  dilemma 
was  exactly  that  of  the  unlucky  fisherman, 
and  her  line  of  action  should  be  the  same, 
with  such  modification  as  the  exigencies 
might  demand.  As  in  his  case,  too,  there 
was  no  time  to  be  lost.  An  expression  of 
ineffable  benevolence  and  serenity  instantly 
overspread  the  features  of  Miss  Went- 


236  A   CHRISTMAS  FANTASY 

worth.  She  leaned  against  the  wardrobe, 
and  regarded  Jumping  Jack  with  a  look  of 
gentle  reproach. 

"  I  thought  you  were  going  to  be  interest 
ing,"  she  remarked  softly. 

"  Ain't  I  interesting  ?  "  asked  the  goblin, 
with  a  touch  of  pardonable  sensitiveness. 

"  No,"  said  Mildred  candidly ;  "  you  are 
not.  Perhaps  you  try  to  be.  That 's  some 
thing,  to  be  sure,  though  it's  not  every 
thing.  Oh,  I  don't  want  to  touch  you," 
she  went  on,  with  an  indifferent  toss  of  her 
curls.  "  How  old  are  you  ?  " 

"  Ever  so  old  and  ever  so  young." 

"Truly?  How  very  odd  to  be  both  at 
once !  Can  you  read  ?  " 

"  Never  tried." 

"  I  'm  afraid  your  parents  did  n't  bring 
you  up  very  well,"  reflected  Mildred. 

"  I  speak  all  languages.  The  little  folk 
of  every  age  and  every  country  understand 
me." 

"  You  're  a  great  traveler,  then." 

"  I  should  say  so !  " 

"  You  don't  seem  to  carry  much  baggage 


A  CHRISTMAS  FANTASY  237 

about  with  you.  I  suppose  you  belong 
somewhere,  and  keep  your  clothes  there.  I 
really  should  like  to  know  where  you  came 
from,  if  it 's  all  the  same  to  you." 

"Out  of  that  box,  my  dove,"  replied 
Jumping  Jack,  having  become  affable  in 
his  turn. 

"  Never ! "  exclaimed  Mildred,  with  a  de 
lightful  air  of  incredulity. 

"  I  hope  I  may  die,"  declared  Helio- 
gabalus,  laying  one  hand  on  the  left  breast 
of  his  mainspring. 

"  I  don't  believe  it,"  said  Mildred,  con 
fidently. 

"Ho,  ho!" 

"  You  are  too  tall,  and  too  wide,  and  too 
—  fluffy.  I  don't  mean  to  hurt  your  feel 
ings,  but  you  are  fluffy.  And  I  just  want 
you  to  stop  that  ho-hoing.  No ;  I  don't  be 
lieve  it." 

"  You  don't,  don't  you  ?  Behold !  "  And 
placing  both  hands  on  the  floor,  Helio" 
gabalus  described  a  circle  in  the  air,  and 
neatly  landed  himself  in  the  box. 

He  was  no  sooner  in  than  Mildred  clapped 


238  A   CHRISTMAS  FANTASY 

down  the  lid,  and  seated  herself  upon  it 
victoriously.  In  the  suddenness  of  her 
movement  she  had  necessarily  neglected  to 
fasten  the  catch ;  but  that  was  a  detail  that 
could  be  attended  to  later.  Meanwhile  she 
was  mistress  of  the  situation  and  could 
dictate  terms.  One  thing  was  resolved: 
Jumping  Jack  was  never  to  jump  again. 
To-morrow  he  should  be  thrown  into  the 
Charles  at  the  foot  of  Mount  Vernon  Street, 
in  order  that  the  tide  might  carry  him  out 
to  sea.  What  would  she  not  have  given  if 
she  could  have  sealed  him  up  with  that 
talismanic  Seal  of  Solomon  which  held  the 
cruel  marid  so  securely  in  his  brazen  casket  ? 
Of  course  it  was  not  in  Mildred's  blood  to 
resist  the  temptation  to  tease  her  captive  a 
little. 

"  Now,  Mr.  Jack,  I  guess  I  've  got  you 
where  you  belong.  If  you  are  not  an  old 
man  this  very  minute,  you  will  be  when  you 
get  out.  You  wanted  to  carry  off  my  Blon- 
della,  did  you  ?  The  idea !  I  hope  you  're 
quite  comfortable." 

"  Let  me  out !  "  growled  Heliogabalus  in 
his  deepest  bass. 


A   CHRISTMAS  FANTASY  239 

"  I  could  n't  think  of  it,  dear.  You  are 
one  of  those  little  boys  that  shouldn't  be 
either  seen  or  heard ;  and  I  don't  want  you 
to  speak  again,  for  I  'm  sitting  on  your 
head,  and  your  voice  goes  right  through  me. 
So  you  will  please  remember  not  to  speak 
unless  you  are  spoken  to."  And  Mildred 
broke  into  the  merriest  laugh  imaginable, 
recollecting  how  many  times  she  herself  had 
been  extinguished  by  the  same  instructions. 

But  Mildred's  triumph  was  premature, 
for  the  little  man  in  the  box  was  as  strong 
as  a  giant  in  a  dime  museum ;  and  now  that 
he  had  fully  recovered  his  breath,  he  began 
pushing  in  a  most  systematic  manner  with 
his  head  and  shoulders,  and  Mildred,  to  her 
great  consternation,  found  herself  being 
slowly  lifted  up  on  the  lid  of  the  chest,  do 
what  she  might.  In  a  minute  or  two  more 
she  must  inevitably  fall  off,  and  Jumping 
Jack  would  have  her!  And  what  mercy 
could  she  expect  at  his  hands,  after  her 
treatment  of  him !  She  was  lost !  Mildred 
stretched  out  her  arms  in  despair,  gave  a 
shriek,  and  opened  her  eyes,  which  had 


240  A  CHRISTMAS  FANTASY 

been  all  the  while  as  tightly  shut  as  a 
couple  of  morning-glories  at  sundown. 

She  was  sitting  on  a  rug  in  the  middle  of 
the  room.  Though  the  window-panes  were 
still  flushed  with  the  memory  of  the  winter 
sunset,  the  iridescent  lights  had  faded  out 
in  the  Japanese  crystal  at  her  feet.  She  was 
not  anywhere  near  the  little  imp.  There 
he  was  over  by  the  fireplace,  staring  at 
nothing  in  his  usual  senseless  fashion.  Not 
a  piece  of  crockery  had  been  broken,  not  a 
chair  upset,  and  Blondella,  the  too-fascinat* 
ing  Blondella,  had  not  had  a  single  tress 
disarranged. 

Mildred  drew  a  long  breath  of  relief. 
What  had  happened?  Had  she  been 
dreaming  ?  She  was  unable  to  answer  the 
question  ;  but  as  she  abstractedly  shook  out 
the  creases  in  the  folds  of  her  skirt,  she  re 
marked  to  herself  that  she  did  not  care,  on 
the  whole,  to  have  any  of  her  things  come 
to  life,  certainly  not  Jumping  Jack.  Just 
then  the  splintering  of  an  icicle  on  the 
window-ledge  outside  sent  a  faint  whiteness 
into  her  cheek,  and  caused  her  to  throw  a 


A  CHRISTMAS  FANTASY  241 

quick,  apprehensive  glance  toward  the  fire 
place.  After  an  instant's  hesitation,  Mil 
dred,  unconsciously  dragging  Blondella  by 
the  hair,  stole  softly  from  the  room,  where 
the  spectres  of  the  twilight  were  beginning 
to  gather  rather  menacingly,  and  went 
downstairs  to  join  the  family  and  relate  her 
strange  adventure. 

The  analysis  of  Miss  Wentworth's  dream 
—  if  it  were  a  dream,  for  later  on  she  de 
clared  it  was  not,  and  hurriedly  gave  Helio- 
gabalus  to  an  unpleasant  small  boy  who 
lived  next  door  —  the  analysis  of  her  dream, 
I  repeat,  shows  strong  traces  of  a  moral. 
Indeed  the  residuum  is  purely  of  that  strin 
gent  quality.  Heliogabalus  must  be  ac 
cepted  as  the  symbol  of  an  ill-considered 
desire  realized.  The  earnestness  with  which 
Miss  Wentworth  invoked  the  phantasm 
and  the  misery  that  came  of  it  are  a  com 
mon  experience.  Painfully  to  attain  pos 
session  of  what  we  do  not  want,  and  then 
painfully  to  waste  our  days  in  attempting 
to  rid  ourselves  of  it,  seems  to  be  a  part  of 


242  A   CHRISTMAS  FANTASY 

our  discipline  here  below.  I  know  a  great 
many  excellent  persons  who  are  spending 
the  latter  moiety  of  life  in  the  endeavor  to 
get  their  particular  Jumping  Jack  snugly 
back  into  its  box  again. 


HER  DYING  WOEDS 


IT  was  the  good  ship  Agamenticus,  five 
days  out  from  New  York,  and  bound  for 
Liverpool.  There  was  never  a  ship  in  a 
more  pitiful  plight. 

On  the  Tuesday  morning  when  she  left 
Sandy  Hook  behind  her,  the  sea  had  been 
nearly  as  smooth  as  an  inland  pond,  and 
the  sky  one  unbroken  blue.  What  wind 
there  was  came  in  fitful  puffs,  and  the  cap 
tain  began  to  be  afraid  that  it  would  leave 
them  altogether.  Toward  sunset,  however, 
the  breeze  freshened  smartly,  and  the  ves 
sel  made  a  phenomenal  run.  On  the  follow 
ing  noon  there  was  a  falling  barometer,  the 
weather  thickened,  the  sun  went  down  in  a 
purple  blur,  and  by  midnight  the  wind  was 
blowing  a  gale.  The  next  day  the  Aga 
menticus  found  herself  rolling  and  plunging 
in  the  midst  of  one  of  those  summer  tern- 


244  HER  DYING  WORDS 

pests  which  frequently  can  give  points  to 
their  wintry  accomplices.  Captain  Saltus, 
who  had  sailed  the  ocean  for  forty  years, 
man  and  boy,  had  never  experienced  any 
thing  like  that  Thursday  night,  unless  it 
was  that  Friday  night,  when  nothing  but  a 
series  of  miracles  saved  the  ship  from 
foundering. 

On  Saturday  morning  the  storm  was 
over.  The  sun  was  breaking  gorgeously 
through  a  narrow  bank  of  fog  that  stretched 
from  east  to  west,  and  the  sea  was  calming 
itself,  sullenly  and  reluctantly,  with  occa 
sional  moans  and  spasms.  The  storm  was 
over,  but  it  had  given  the  Agamenticus  her 
death-blow.  The  dripping  decks  were  clut 
tered  with  rope-ends,  split  blocks,  broken 
stanchions,  and  pine  splinters  —  the  debris 
of  the  foremast,  of  which  only  some  ten  or 
twenty  feet  remained.  Such  canvas  as  had 
not  been  securely  furled  hung  in  shreds 
from  the  main  and  mizzen  yards,  and  at 
every  lurch  of  the  ship  the  flying  cordage 
aloft  lashed  the  masts.  Two  life-boats, 
with  the  bottoms  stove  in,  swung  loosely 


HER  DYING  WORDS  245 

from  the  davits  on  the  port  side  ;  the  star 
board  boats  were  gone.  The  same  sea  that 
had  wrenched  them  from  their  fastenings 
had  also  swept  away  John  Sharon,  the  first 
mate.  But  the  climax  of  all  these  disas 
ters  was  a  dreadful  leak,  the  exact  location 
of  which  was  hidden  by  the  cargo. 

Such  was  the  plight  of  the  good  ship 
Agamenticus  at  sunrise,  on  that  fifth  day 
out  from  New  York. 

The  Agamenticus  was  a  merchantman  of 
about  twelve  hundred  tons,  and  had  excel 
lent  cabin  accommodations,  though  she  had 
been  designed  especially  for  freight.  On 
this  voyage,  however,  there  happened  to  be 
five  passengers  —  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Livingston 
Tredick,  Ellen  Louise,  their  daughter,  Dr. 
Newton  Downs,  and  Miss  Tredick's  maid. 
The  vessel  belonged  to  a  line  running  be 
tween  Boston  and  New  Orleans,  and  on 
the  present  occasion  was  making  a  chance 
trip  to  Liverpool. 

Mr.  Tredick  was  a  wealthy  retired  mer 
chant  who  was  intending  to  pass  the  summer 
at  the  German  baths  with  his  wife  and 


246  HER  DYING  WORDS 

daughter,  and  had  followed  the  advice  of 
his  family  physician  in  selecting  a  sailing 
vessel  instead  of  a  steamer,  in  order  that 
Mrs.  Tredick,  somewhat  of  an  invalid, 
might  get  the  benefit  of  a  protracted  sea 
voyage.  Louise,  the  daughter,  was  a  very 
beautiful  girl  of  nineteen  or  twenty ;  and 
Dr.  Downs  was  a  young  physician  of  great 
promise  and  few  patients,  who  had  willingly 
consented  to  be  Mr.  Tredick's  guest  as  far 
as  Liverpool.  The  air  in  which  Miss  Lou 
ise  Tredick  moved  had  been  for  two  years 
or  more  the  only  air  that  this  young  scientist 
could  breathe  without  difficulty. 

The  relations  existing  between  these  two 
persons  were  of  a  rather  unusual  nature, 
and  require  a  word  or  so  of  explanation. 

At  the  time  of  his  father's  death,  which 
occurred  in  1879,  Newton  Downs  was  in 
his  senior  year  at  Bowdoin.  The  father 
had  been  a  lawyer  with  an  extensive  prac 
tice  and  extravagant  tastes,  and  his  large 
annual  income,  easily  acquired,  had  always 
been  as  easily  disposed  of.  He  was  still  in 
his  prime,  and  was  meditating  future  econo- 


HER  DYING   WORDS  247 

mies  for  the  sake  of  his  boy,  when  death 
placed  an  injunction  on  those  plans.  Young 
Downs  was  left  with  little  more  than  suf 
ficient  means  to  enable  him  to  finish  his 
college  course  and  pursue  his  medical  stud 
ies  for  a  year  or  two  abroad.  He  then 
established  himself  professionally  in  New 
York;  that  is  to  say,  he  took  a  modest 
suite  of  rooms  on  a  ground  floor  in  West 
Eighteenth  Street,  and  ornamented  the 
right-hand  side  of  the  doorway  with  an  en 
graved  brass  plate 


Betoton  Actons,  Jfi.  ZX 
Aurist. 


The  small,  semi-detached  boy  whose  duty 
it  was  to  keep  that  brass  tablet  bright  ab 
sorbed  the  whole  of  the  Doctor's  fees  for 
the  first  six  months. 

It  was  in  the  course  of  this  tentative 
first  half  year  that  Dr.  Downs  made  the  ac 
quaintance  of  the  Tredick  family,  and  had 
definitely  surrendered  himself  to  the  charm 
of  Miss  Tredick,  before  he  discovered  the 


248  HER  DYING  WORDS 

fact  —  to  him  the  fatal  fact  —  that  she  was 
not  only  the  daughter  of  a  very  wealthy  fa 
ther,  but  was  very  wealthy  in  her  own  right. 
In  the  eyes  of  most  men  these  offenses  would 
not  have  seemed  without  mitigating  circum 
stances  ;  but  to  Dr.  Downs,  with  his  peculiar 
point  of  view,  they  were  an  insurmounta 
ble  barrier.  A  young  and  impoverished 
gentleman,  who  had  made  a  specialty  of 
the  human  ear  and  could  not  get  any  hear 
ing  out  of  the  public,  was  scarcely  a  bril 
liant  parti  for  Miss  Ellen  Louise  Tredick. 
His  pride  and  his  poverty,  combined,  closed 
that  gate  on  Dr.  Downs.  If  he  could  have 
been  poor  and  not  proud,  perhaps  it  would 
have  greatly  simplified  the  situation. 

"Since  fate  has  set  me  penniless  on 
the  threshold  of  life,"  reflected  the  Doctor, 
one  evening  shortly  after  his  financial  dis 
covery,  "  why  did  not  fate  make  a  pauper 
of  Miss  Tredick  ?  Then  I  could  have 
asked  her  to  be  my  wife,  and  faced  the 
world  dauntlessly,  like  thousands  of  others 
who  have  found  love  a  sufficient  capital 
to  start  housekeeping  on.  Miss  Tredick's 


HER  DYING   WORDS  249 

grandfather  behaved  like  an  idiot,  to  go 
and  leave  her  such  a  preposterous  fortune ; 
and  her  own  father  is  not  behaving  himself 
much  better.  I  wish  the  pair  of  them 
could  lose  their  money.  If  Tredick  only 
were  a  Wall  Street  magnate,  there  would 
be  some  chance  of  their  going  to  pieces 
some  fine  day  —  then  I  might  pick  up  one 
of  the  pieces !  " 

Unless  he  should  become  abruptly  rich, 
or  Mr.  Tredick  and  his  daughter  abruptly 
poor,  there  really  seemed  no  way  out  of  it 
for  the  young  doctor.  As  the  months  went 
by,  neither  of  those  things  appeared  likely 
to  happen.  So  Newton  Downs  kept  his 
love  to  himself,  and  looked  with  despairing 
eyes  upon  Miss  Tredick  as  a  glittering  im 
possibility.  It  was  the  desire  of  the  moth 
for  the  star,  the  longing  of  the  dime  to  be 
a  dollar. 

Dr.  Downs's  unhappiness  did  not  ter 
minate  here.  There  is  no  man  at  once  so 
unselfish  and  selfish  as  a  man  in  love.  In 
this  instance  the  moth,  without  the  dimmest 
perception  of  its  own  ungenerosity,  wanted 


250  HER  DYING   WORDS 

the  star  to  be  a  little  unhappy  also.  There 
was  no  sacrifice,  excepting  that  of  his  pride, 
which  Dr.  Downs  would  not  have  made  for 
Miss  Tredick;  yet  he  found  it  very  hard 
to  have  a  hopeless  passion  all  to  himself, 
and  that,  clearly,  was  what  he  was  having. 
He  had  no  illusions  concerning  Miss 
Tredick's  attitude  toward  him.  It  was 
one  of  intimate  indifference.  A  girl  does 
not  treat  a  possible  lover  with  unvarying 
simplicity  and  directness.  In  all  its  phases 
love  is  complex  ;  friendship  is  not.  With 
other  men  Miss  Tredick  coquetted,  or  al 
most  coquetted;  but  with  him  she  never 
dropped  that  air  of  mere  camaraderie  which 
said  as  distinctly  as  such  a  disagreeable 
thing  ought  ever  to  be  said,  "  Of  course, 
between  us  that  is  out  of  the  question.  You 
cannot  offer  me  the  kind  of  home  you  would 
take  me  from,  and  I  know  you  slightly,  Dr. 
Downs,  if  you  would  be  willing  to  accept 
rich  surroundings  at  any  woman's  hand.  I 
like  you  very  much  —  in  a  way  ;  and  papa 
likes  you  very  well,  too.  He  sees  that  you 
are  not  at  all  sentimental."  Times  without 


HER  DYING  WORDS  251 

number  had  Downs  translated  Miss  Tre- 
dick's  manner  into  these  or  similar  phrases. 
He  came  at  last  to  find  a  morbid  satisfac 
tion  in  such  literary  exercises. 

Now,  Newton  Downs  had  been  under 
going  this  experience  for  upward  of  two 
years,  when  Mr.  Tredick,  who  appeared 
indeed  to  regard  him  as  an  exemplary  and 
harmless  young  man,  invited  the  Doctor  to 
take  that  trip  to  Liverpool  on  board  the 
Agamenticus,  and  to  spend  a  week  in  Lon 
don  or  Paris,  if  he  were  so  inclined,  while 
the  ship  was  getting  ready  for  the  return 
voyage. 

The  proposition  nearly  blinded  Dr.  Downs 
with  its  brilliancy.  The  cabin  had  been 
engaged  by  Mr.  Tredick,  and  there  were 
to  be  no  other  passengers.  There  were  four 
staterooms  opening  upon  the  saloon  —  the 
one  occupied  by  the  captain  was  to  be  given 
up  to  Dr.  Downs.  The  tenor  of  Mr.  Tre- 
dick's  invitation  left  the  young  man  no 
scruples  about  accepting  it.  Mr.  Tredick 
had  said :  "  On  account  of  my  wife  and 
daughter,  I  should  n't  think  of  crossing 


252  HER  DYING  WORDS 

without  a  medical  man  on  board.  I  know 
how  valuable  a  professional  man's  time  is. 
The  favor  will  be  wholly  on  your  side  if  I 
can  persuade  you  to  go  with  us."  So  Dr. 
Downs  agreed  to  go.  To  have  Miss  Tredick 
all  to  himself,  as  it  were,  for  eighteen  or 
twenty  days  —  perhaps  twenty-five  —  was 
an  incredible  stroke  of  fortune.  How  it 
would  grieve  Mr.  Cornelius  Van  Coot,  the 
opulent  stockbroker,  and  that  young  De- 
lancy  Duane,  who  had  caused  Newton 
Downs  many  an  uneasy  moment ! 

44  If  I  am  not  to  have  earthly  happiness 
with  her,"  mused  Dr.  Downs,  on  his  walk 
home  that  night  from  Madison  Avenue,  "  I 
am  to  have  at  least  some  watery  happiness ! 
The  dull  season  is  coming  on  "  —  he  smiled 
sarcastically  as  he  thought  of  that  —  "  and 
all  my  patients  will  have  retired  to  their 
country-seats.  Business  will  not  suffer,  and 
I  shall  escape  July  and  August  in  town." 
Then  he  began  making  mental  vignettes  of 
Miss  Tredick  in  a  blue  flannel  yachting 
suit,  and  gave  her  two  small  anchors, 
worked  in  gold  braid,  for  the  standing 


HER  DYING  WORDS  253 

collar,  and  chevrons  of  the  same  for  the 
left  coat-sleeve.  "  How  glorious  it  will  be 
to  promenade  the  deck  in  the  moonlight 
after  the  old  folks  have  turned  in  !  I  hope 
that  they  will  be  dreadfully  ill,  and  that  we 
shall  keep  dreadfully  well.  The  moment 
we  pass  Sandy  Hook  Light,  overboard  goes 
Miss  Tredick's  maid !  .  .  .  What  pleasure 
it  will  be  to  fetch  her  wraps,  and  black 
Hamburg  grapes,  and  footstools,  and  iced 
lemonades  —  to  sit  with  her  under  an  awn 
ing,  clear  aft,  with  magazines  and  illustrated 
papers  "  —  he  instantly  resolved  to  buy  out 
Brentano  —  "to  lean  against  the  taffrail, 
and  watch  the  long  emerald  sweep  of  the 
waves,  and  the  sweep  of  Miss  Tredick's 
eyelashes ! " 

It  is  to  be  remarked  of  Miss  Tredick's 
eyelashes,  that  they  were  very  long  and 
very  dark,  and  drooped  upon  a  most  health 
ful  tint  of  cheek  —  neither  too  rosy  nor  too 
pallid  —  for  she  belonged  to  that  later  type 
of  American  girl  who  rides  horseback  and 
is  not  afraid  of  a  five-mile  walk  through  the 
woods  and  fields.  There  were  great  dig- 


254  HER  DYING  WORDS 

nity,  and  delicacy,  and  strength  in  her  tall 
figure;  an  innocent  fearlessness  in  her 
clear,  hazel  eyes,  and,  close  to,  Miss  Tre- 
dick's  eyelashes  were  worth  looking  at.  It 
was  young  Delancy  Duane  who  said  that  it 
took  her  half  an  hour  every  morning  to 
disentangle  them. 

Dr.  Downs  sat  up  late  that  night  at  the 
open  window  of  his  office  —  it  was  in  the 
middle  of  June  —  reflecting  on  the  endless 
pleasant  possibilities  of  the  sea  voyage. 
Would  he  go  no  further  than  Liverpool? 
or  would  he  run  up  to  London,  and  then 
over  to  Paris  ?  In  other  days  he  had  been 
very  happy  in  Paris,  in  the  old  Latin 
Quarter !  He  sat  there  in  the  silent  room, 
with  no  other  light  than  his  dreams. 

They  were  not  destined  to  be  realized. 
That  first  day  at  sea  promised  everything ; 
then  came  the  rough  weather,  and  then  the 
terrible  storm,  which  lasted  thirty-six  hours 
or  more,  and  all  but  wrenched  the  Agamen- 
ticus  asunder,  leaving  her  on  the  fifth 
morning,  as  has  been  described,  a  helpless 
wreck  in  the  middle  of  the  Atlantic. 


HER  DYING  WORDS  255 

During  the  height  of  the  tempest  the 
passengers  were  imprisoned  in  the  cabin, 
for  it  had  been  necessary  to  batten  down 
the  hatches.  It  was  so  dark  below  that  the 
lamp  suspended  over  the  cabin  table  was 
kept  constantly  burning.  The  heavy  seas 
on  Thursday  had  put  out  the  fire  in  the 
galley,  which  was  afterward  demolished, 
and  the  cook  had  retreated  to  some  spot 
between  decks,  whence  he  managed  to  serve 
hot  coffee  and  sandwiches  to  the  saloon  at 
meal-times.  Even  this  became  nearly  im 
practicable  after  Friday  noon. 

Mr.  and  Mrs.  Tredick  were  permanently 
confined  to  their  stateroom,  and  so  desper 
ately  ill  as  to  be  for  the  most  part  uncon 
scious  of  what  was  taking  place.  Miss 
Tredick's  maid,  who  had  been  brought 
along  chiefly  to  look  after  Mrs.  Tredick, 
was  in  a  like  condition.  Dr.  Downs  and 
Miss  Tredick  were  fair  sailors  in  ordinary 
weather ;  it  was  the  strain  on  their  nerves 
that  now  kept  them  "  dreadfully  well." 

Neither  thought  of  closing  an  eye  that 
fearful  Friday  night.  They  passed  the 


256  HER  DYING  WORDS 

whole  night  in  the  saloon,  seated  opposite 
each  other,  with  the  narrow  stationary 
table,  which  served  as  a  support,  between 
them.  They  exchanged  scarcely  a  word  as 
they  sat  listening  to  the  thud  of  the  tre 
mendous  waves  that  broke  over  the  vessel. 
Indeed,  most  of  the  time  speech  would  have 
been  inaudible  amid  the  roar  of  the  wind, 
the  shuffling  tramp  of  the  sailors  on  the 
deck,  the  creak  of  the  strained  timbers, 
and  the  hundred  mysterious,  half  articulate 
cries  that  are  wrung  from  the  agony  of  a 
ship  in  a  storm  at  sea. 

Miss  Tredick  was  very  quiet  and  serious, 
but  apparently  not  terrified.  If  an  expres 
sion  of  anxiety  now  and  then  came  into  her 
face,  it  was  when  she  glanced  toward  the 
stateroom  where  her  mother  and  father 
were.  The  door  stood  open,  and  Miss 
Tredick,  by  turning  slightly  in  the  chair, 
could  see  them  in  their  berths.  They  were 
lying  in  a  kind  of  lethargic  sleep.  Save 
for  a  touch  of  unwonted  paleness,  and  cer 
tain  traces  of  weariness  about  the  eyes, 
Miss  Tredick  looked  as  she  might  have 


HER  DYING  WORDS  257 

looked  sitting,  in  some  very  serious  mood, 
in  her  own  room  at  home.  This  was  cour 
age  pure  and  simple;  for  the  girl  was 
imaginative  in  a  high  degree,  and  it  is  the 
imagination  that  conspires  to  undermine 
one's  firmness  in  critical  moments.  An  un 
imaginative  person's  indifference  to  danger 
is  not  courage,  it  is  obtuseness.  Miss  Tre- 
dick  had  the  fullest  realization  of  the  peril 
they  were  in. 

There  was  in  her  countenance  this  night 
a  kind  of  spiritual  beauty  that  seemed  new 
to  the  young  man.  "  I  don't  think  she  ever 
looked  so  much  like  herself  before !  "  was 
Newton  Downs's  inward  comment  once,  as 
he  met  her  gaze  across  the  narrow  table. 
He  could  hardly  keep  his  eyes  away  from 
her. 

Dr.  Downs's  self-possession  was  not  so 
absolute  as  Miss  Tredick's.  He  was  a 
brave  man,  as  she  was  a  brave  girl,  and  the 
fears  which  unnerved  him  at  intervals  were 
not  on  his  own  account.  To  him  his  life 
weighed  light  in  the  balance  against  hers. 
That  all  this  buoyant  womanhood  and  rare 


258  HER  DYING  WORDS 

loveliness  should  be  even  remotely  menaced 
with  a  cruel  death  was  an  intolerable 
thought.  And  the  menace  was  not  remote. 
There  were  moments  when  he  wavered  in 
his  faith  in  the  divine  goodness.  There 
were  moments,  too,  when  he  had  it  on  his 
lips  to  tell  Miss  Tredick  everything  that 
had  been  in  his  mind  those  last  two  years. 
But  here  the  old  pride  whispered  to  him. 
Later  on,  would  it  not  seem  as  if  he  had 
taken  advantage  of  a  fortuitous  situation  to 
make  avowals  to  which  she  could  not  well 
avoid  listening? 

It  was  some  time  near  midnight  that  the 
foremast  fell  with  a  great  crash.  Miss 
Tredick  involuntarily  stretched  out  one  of 
her  hands  to  Downs. 

"  What  was  that  ?  " 

"  A  heavy  spar,  or  a  topmast,  must  have 
fallen,"  suggested  Downs. 

In  the  lull  that  followed  they  could  hear 
what  sounded  like  axe-strokes  dealt  in  quick 
succession.  The  ship  had  heeled  over 
frightfully  to  port.  She  held  that  position 
for  perhaps  twenty  minutes,  then  slowly 
righted. 


HER  DYING  WORDS  259 

"Itwas  one  of  the  masts,"  Downs  ob 
served  ;  "  they  have  cut  it  adrift."  And 
Miss  Tredick  softly  withdrew  her  hand. 

After  this  the  lulls  grew  more  frequent 
and  prolonged,  and  toward  daybreak  the 
storm  began  rapidly  to  abate.  There  was 
very  much  less  motion,  and  the  noises  over 
head  had  subsided.  The  ship's  bell,  which 
had  made  a  muffled,  intermittent  clamor 
throughout  the  night,  had  now  given  over 
its  tolling.  This  comparative  stillness, 
succeeding  the  tumult,  seemed  to  have  a 
poignant  quality  in  it.  It  was  as  if  the 
whole  world  had  suddenly  stopped,  like  a 
clock.  The  vessel  appeared  to  be  making 
but  slight  headway.  Presently  the  dawn 
whitened  the  stern  ports  and  the  little  disks 
of  opaque  glass  let  into  the  deck,  and  Dr. 
Downs  heard  the  men  at  work  on  the 
hatches.  The  long  vigil  was  ended. 

"  Now  go  and  lie  down  for  an  hour  or 
so,"  he  said,  rising  from  the  chair  with  his 
limbs  cramped.  "  I  '11  take  a  glance  at  the 
state  of  things  above.  I  shall  never  for 
get  this  night,  Miss  Tredick." 


260  HER  DYING  WORDS 

"Nor  I,"  she  answered;  and  she  looked 
so  lovely  sitting  there  in  the  twilight  of  the 
cabin,  with  an  illuminated  oval  port  behind 
her  head  forming  a  halo,  that  the  young 
doctor  faltered  a  second  or  two  on  the 
threshold. 

At  the  top  of  the  companion-way  he  met 
Captain  Saltus  on  the  point  of  descending. 
He  was  still  in  his  oilskin  reefer  and  over 
alls,  and  presented  the  appearance  of  a 
diver  who  had  just  been  brought  exhausted 
to  the  surface. 

44  Good  -  morning,  Captain  !  "  cried  Dr. 
Downs,  gayly,  exhilarated  by  a  full  breath 
of  the  fresh  sea  air  and  a  glimpse  of  the 
half-risen  sun  ploughing  up  opals  and  ru 
bies  in  a  low  bank  of  fog  stretching  to  the 
eastward.  "  We  have  weathered  it,  after 
all,  but  by  Jove  "  —  Something  in  the 
firm-set  lines  of  the  Captain's  mouth  caused 
the  Doctor  to  leave  his  sentence  unfinished. 
At  the  same  instant  a  curious  wailing  sound 
reached  his  ear  from  the  forward  part  of 
the  ship.  "  What  has  happened  ?  "  he 
asked,  in  a  lower  voice ;  for  they  were 


HER  DYING  WORDS  261 

close  to  the  companion-way,  and  the  door 
at  the  foot  of  the  stair  stood  open. 

"I  was  just  coming  to  tell  you,"  replied 
the  Captain,  gravely,  "  you  and  Mr.  Tre- 
dick." 

"  Is  it  anything  serious  ?  " 
"  Very  serious,  as  serious  as  can  be." 
"  They  must  n't  hear  us  below.     Come 
over  by  the  rail.     What  is  the  matter  — 
has  anybody  been  hurt  ?  " 

"  We  've  all  been  hurt,  Dr.  Downs,"  re 
turned  the  Captain,  drawing  the  back  of 
one  hand  across  his  wet  brows,  "  every  soul 
of  us!  There's  an  ugly  leak  somewhere 
below  the  water-line,  we  don't  know  where, 
and  ain't  likely  to  know,  though  the  men 
are  tearing  up  the  cargo  trying  to  find  out. 
Perhaps  half  a  dozen  seams  have  started, 
perhaps  a  plank.  The  thing  widens.  The 
ship  is  filling  hand  over  hand,  and  the 
pumps  dorUt  work." 

"  But  surely  the  leak  will  be  found !  " 
"Dr.  Downs,"  said  the   Captain,  "the 
old  Agamenticus  has  made  her  last  cruise." 
He  said  this  very  simply.     He  had  faced 


262  EER  DYING  WORDS 

death  on  almost  every  known  sea,  and  from 
his  boyhood  had  looked  upon  the  ocean  as 
his  burial  place.  There  he  was  to  lie  at 
last,  with  his  ship,  or  in  a  shotted  hammock, 
as  the  case  might  be.  Such  end  had  been 
his  father's  and  his  grandfather's  before 
him,  for  he  had  come  of  a  breed  of  sea- 
kings. 

"  Then  we  shall  have  to  take  to  the  life 
boats  ! "  cried  Downs,  breaking  from  the 
stupor  into  which  the  Captain's  announce 
ment  had  plunged  him. 

"  Two  of  them  were  blown  out  of  the 
lashings  last  night ;  the  other  two  are  over 
yonder." 

Dr.  Downs's  glance  followed  the  pointing 
of  the  Captain's  finger.  Then  the  young 
man's  chin  sank  on  his  breast.  "  At  least 
we  shall  die  together !  "  he  said  softly  to 
himself. 

"  I  don't  know  where  we  are,"  remarked 
the  Captain,  casting  his  eyes  over  the  lonely 
expanse  of  sea.  "  I  've  not  been  able  to 
take  an  observation  since  Wednesday  noon. 
It's  pretty  certain  that  we've  been  driven 


HER  DYING  WORDS  263 

out  of  our  course,  but  how  far  is  guess 
work.  We  're  not  in  the  track  of  vessels, 
anyhow.  I  counted  on  sighting  a  sail  at 
daybreak.  It  was  our  only  hope,  but  it 
was  n't  to  be.  That 's  a  nasty  bit  of  breeze 
off  there  to  the  east'ard,"  he  added,  irrel 
evantly,  following  his  habit  of  noting  such 
detail.  Then  he  recollected  the  business 
that  had  brought  him  to  the  cabin.  "  Some 
of  the  men  f or'ard  are  rigging  up  a  raft ;  I 
don't  myself  set  any  great  value  on  rafts, 
as  a  general  thing,  but  I  wish  you  'd  break 
the  matter,  kind  of  incidentally,  to  Mr. 
Tredick  and  the  ladies,  and  tell  them  to 
get  ready.  There  isn't  too  much  time  to 
lose,  Dr.  Downs !  " 

A  figure  glided  from  the  companion- 
hatch,  and  passing  swiftly  by  Dr.  Downs 
halted  at  the  Captain's  side. 

"  I  have  heard  what  you  said,  Captain 
Saltus  "  —  Miss  Tredick  spoke  slowly,  but 
without  any  tremor  in  her  voice  —  "  and  I 
am  not  frightened,  you  see.  I  want  you  to 
answer  me  one  question." 

"  If  I  can,  Miss  Tredick." 


264  HER  DYING  WORDS 

"How  long  will  it  be  before — before 
the  end  comes  ?  " 

"  Well,  miss,  the  wind  has  died  away, 
and  the  sea  is  getting  smoother  every  second. 
Mr.  Bowlsby  thinks  he  will  be  able  to 
launch  the  raft  within  three  quarters  of  an 
hour.  Then  there 's  the  ship-stores  "  — 

"  Yes  !  yes !  —  but  how  long  ?  " 

"  Before  we  leave  the  ship,  miss  ?  " 

"  No,  before  the  ship  sinks!  " 

"  That  I  can't  say.  She  may  keep  afloat 
two  or  three  hours,  if  the  wind  doesn't 
freshen." 

"  And  if  the  wind  freshens  ?  " 

"  It  would  be  lively  work,  miss." 

"  You  are  convinced,  then,  that  we  are 
irrevocably  lost  ?  " 

"Well,"  returned  the  Captain,  embar 
rassed  by  the  unexpected  composure  of  the 
girl,  "  I  would  never  say  that.  There 's  the 
raft.  There  is  generally  a  chance  of  being 
picked  up.  Besides,  we  are  always  in  God's 
world!" 

Miss  Tredick  bowed  her  head,  and  let 
her  hand  rest  gently  for  an  instant  on  the 


HER  DYING   WORDS  265 

Captain's  coat-sleeve.  In  that  touch  was  a 
furtive  and  pathetic  farewell. 

"  Miss  Tredick,"  cried  the  Captain,  as 
he  lifted  his  cap  respectfully,  "  damn  me 
if  I  'm  not  proud  to  sink  with  so  brave  a 
lady,  and  any  man  might  well  be  !  You  're 
a  lesson  to  those  Portuguese,  with  their 
leaden  images,  caterwauling  up  there  in  the 
bows!" 

"  Now  I  would  like  to  speak  a  moment 
with  Dr.  Downs,"  said  Miss  Tredick,  half 
hesitatingly. 

As  the  Captain  slowly  walked  forward 
among  the  crew,  there  was  a  dash  of  salt 
spray  on  his  cheek.  The  girl  paused,  and 
looked  after  him  with  a  quick,  indescribable 
expression  of  tenderness  in  her  eyes.  Two 
intrepid  souls,  moving  on  diverse  planes  in 
this  lower  sphere,  had  met  in  one  swift  in 
stant  of  recognition ! 

During  the  short  dialogue  between  Cap 
tain  Saltus  and  Miss  Tredick,  Newton 
Downs  had  stood  leaning  against  the  rail,  a 
few  feet  distant.  As  he  stood  there  he 
noticed  that  the  ship  was  gradually  settling* 


266  HER  DYING  WORDS 

Until  the  night  before,  the  idea  of  death 
—  of  death  close  to,  immediate  —  had  never 
come  to  him  ;  it  had  been  always  something 
vague,  a  thing  possible,  perhaps  certain, 
after  years  and  years.  It  had  been  a  very 
real  thing  to  him  that  night  in  the  storm, 
yet  still  indistinct  so  far  as  touched  him 
personally ;  for  his  thoughts  had  been  less 
of  himself  than  of  Miss  Tredick.  His 
thought  now  was  wholly  of  her.  What 
should  be  done  ?  Would  it  not  be  better 
to  go  down  in  the  vessel  than  to  drift 
about  the  Atlantic  for  days  and  days  on  a 
fragile  raft,  and  endure  a  thousand  deaths  ? 
When  he  contemplated  the  possible  horror 
of  such  brief  reprieve,  his  heart  turned 
cold.  If  it  was  decided  to  take  to  the  raft, 
he  would  pray  that  another  blow,  such 
as  the  Captain  seemed  to  predict,  might 
speedily  come  to  end  their  suffering.  The 
Captain  himself  had  plainly  resolved  to 
sink  with  the  ship.  Would  not  that  be  the 
more  merciful  fate  for  all  of  them  ?  Had 
not  the  thought  occurred  to  Miss  Tredick, 
too? 


HER  DYING   WORDS  267 

"  Dr.  Downs." 

The  young  man  raised  his  head,  and  saw 
Miss  Tredick  standing  in  front  of  him. 
There  was  a  noticeable  alteration  in  her 
manner;  it  lacked  something  of  the  self- 
possession  it  had  had  while  she  was  address 
ing  the  Captain,  and  her  lips  were  nearly 
colorless.  "Is  she  losing  her  splendid 
courage?"  Downs  asked  himself,  with  a 
pang. 

"  There  may  not  be  another  opportunity 
for  me  to  speak  with  you  alone,"  she  said 
hurriedly,  "  here  or  on  the  raft.  How  cruel 
it  all  seems  !  The  world  we  knew  has  sud 
denly  and  strangely  come  to  an  end  for  us. 
I  could  not  say  to  you  in  that  world  what  I 
wish  to  say  to  you  now.  You,  too,  did  not 
speak  your  thoughts  to  me  there,  and  the 
reason  of  your  silence  was  unworthy  of  us 
both" —  Dr.  Downs  gave  a  little  start, 
and  made  a  motion  to  interrupt  her,  but 
she  stopped  him  with  an  imploring  gesture. 
"  No,  you  must  listen,  for  these  are  my  dy 
ing  words.  You  were  blind  —  oh,  so  blind ! 
You  did  not  see  me  as  I  was,  you  did  not 


268  HER  DYING  WORDS 

understand,  for  I  think  I  loved  you  from 
that  first  day "  —  then,  with  a  piteous 
quiver  of  the  lip,  she  added  —  "  and  I  shall 
love  you  all  the  rest  of  my  life !  " 

The  young  man's  first  impulse  was  to 
kneel  at  her  feet,  but  the  tall,  slight  figure 
was  now  drooping  before  him.  He  leaned 
forward,  and  took  the  girl  in  his  arms. 
She  rested  her  cheek  on  his  shoulder,  with 
her  eyes  closed.  So  they  stood  there,  si 
lently,  in  the  red  sunrise.  Whether  life 
lasted  a  minute  or  a  century  was  all  one  to 
those  two  lovers  on  the  sinking  ship. 

The  hammering  of  the  men  at  work  on 
the  raft  had  ceased,  and  the  strange  silence 
that  fell  upon  the  vessel  was  emphasized 
rather  than  broken  by  the  intermittent 
lamentations  of  the  Portuguese  sailors 
crowded  into  the  bow  of  the  ship.  Captain 
Saltus,  with  a  curious  expression  in  his 
face,  leaned  against  the  capstan,  watching 
them. 

Suddenly  there  was  a  rush  of  feet,  fol 
lowed  by  confused  cries  on  the  forecastle- 
deck;  a  man  had  shouted  something,  the 


HER  DYING  WORDS  269 

import  of  which  did  not  instantly  reach  the 
little  group  aft. 

"  Where  away  ?  "  cried  the  second  officer, 
leaping  into  the  lower  shrouds. 

"  On  the  starboard  bow,  sir !  The  fog 's 
been  hiding  her." 

"  Where  's  the  glass  ?  —  can  you  make 
her  out?" 

"  I  think  it 's  an  Iimian  liner,  sir  —  she 
is  signaling  to  us  I  " 

"Thank  God  1" 


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